Alvar Aalto

by Richard Weston, Alvar Aalto

Internationally renowned as one of the major achievements of modern architecture, the work of Alvar Aalto (1898-1976) was deeply rooted in the culture and the landscape of his native Finland. A Grand Duchy of Russia until the revolution of 1917, the newly independent state promoted architecture as a means of establishing its identity as a social democracy, and in Aalto found an architect with the ambition and talents to meet the challenge. Throughout a long and fertile career his work embraced almost all the key public institutions - town halls, libraries, theatres, churches, universities and government departments - as well as social housing and private dwellings, and he brought to buildings of every type and scale a profound concern for the physical and psychological needs of their individual users, as well as remarkable sensitivity to natural sites and materials and to the experimental qualities of architecture. The complete range of his work is examined through a study of recurring themes - the dialogue between nature and culture, the reciprocity of the individual and the collective, building and place.

Genres: Architecture

240 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1995

About the author

Professor Richard Weston (born 1953) is an architect, landscape architect, author[1] and is also the Chair of Architecture at Cardiff University. He is Director of Richard Weston Studio Ltd and Earth Images Ltd.

Weston was born in Leicester in 1953. He attended Wyggeston Boys Grammar School. He went on to study architecture at Manchester University, gaining a BA in 1975 and BArch in 1977. Supported by the Thouron Award, he attended the University of Pennsylvania (USA) to study landscape architecture, gaining an MLA (Penn) in 1979. From 1979–1982 he worked in practice and was appointed as a lecturer at the Welsh School of Architecture (WSA) in Cardiff. He subsequently taught at the Leicester and Portsmouth schools of architecture before returning to Cardiff in 1999 as a professorial research fellow. In 2003 he was appointed to the Chair of Architecture, a position he holds today.