Birth Anniversary: Alvar Aalto — February 3, 1898

Alvar Aalto was born at Kuortane, in Finland, on 3 February 1898. Architect and designer, he gave the modern movement a warm and human face: wood, organic curves and northern light in place of the abstraction of the machine. From the Paimio Sanatorium to Finlandia Hall in Helsinki, from the bent plywood furniture of Artek to the famous vase of 1936, he fused architecture and industrial design into a single idea of wellbeing. The anniversary marks the master who made Finnish modernism unmistakable in the world.