One of Finnish modern architect Alvar Aalto's famous designs is the Hand Grenade pendant light from 1952. Its sleek cylinder within a cylinder doesn't look particularly like the explosive device, but its name suggests the impact this iconic figure had on architecture and design.
Or rather, the impact they had: Alvar and his first wife, Aino, who was trained as both an architect and a carpenter, and (to some extent) his second wife, Elissa. That's the framing of the 2020 documentary Aalto: Architect of Emotions, by Finnish director Virpi Suutari. The film will be screened on Wednesday, December 13, at Burlington City Hall Auditorium, 118 Elliot in Brattleboro and online, as part of the free Architecture + Design Film Series.
As respected as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, Alvar and Aino Aalto are known for leavening the sterile rectilinearity of modern architecture with organic forms and human-centered design.
In the U.S., one of the Aaltos' three projects was Baker House, a 1947 dorm at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., that stretches like a sinuous snake along the Charles River. The couple's masterpieces in Finland include 1939's Villa Mairea in Noormarkku, whose open-plan first floor is populated with irregularly grouped, rattan-wrapped wood columns and poles, echoing the forest outside.
Andrew Chardain, an architect with Birdseye in Richmond for the past seven years, selects the films for the series each year with artist Lynda Reeves McIntyre and business owner Karen Frost.
Aalto, he said, "struck me in particular because it's not your traditional documentary; it's really a love story. As an architecture student, you learn so much about the [buildings], but there's very little exposure to the partnership that existed between a master and another master, in this case Aino."
Chardain, who counts the Aaltos "within my top five influences" as an architect, likens Baker House to a Richard Serra sculpture. "There's a playfulness to it," he said. "It's serious — it houses students — but it's also democratic: Everybody should have a pleasing view of the river."
The Aaltos' designs were definitely "radical," he continued, but "they had an attitude and sensibility around modernism that brought a level of familiarity to it. [They considered] the quality of the light or the tactility of a handrail wrapped in leather — things that make you feel comfortable."
Aino was the chief designer and managing director of Artek, the company the couple founded with two other partners in 1935 to manufacture Aalto-designed items. Still in production today, these widely coveted designs include wavy glass vases (aalto means "wave"), bent-wood stools, a stunner of a tea cart and at least a dozen innovative lighting fixtures.
McIntyre has organized a small exhibition of some of these items for audiences to peruse prior to the Burlington screening, which also offers free pizza and NU Chocolat truffles, as well as a cash bar.
"I think the pieces' forms and materials, even for people who don't know Aalto's work, will bring a beautiful and physical reality to his work," McIntyre said. "They're timeless."
Architecture + Design Film Series presents Aalto: Architect of Emotions, Wednesday, December 13, 6 p.m., at Burlington City Hall Auditorium and 118 Elliot in Brattleboro. Free. adfilmseries.org
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