Alvar Aalto: Between Humanism and Materialism

Of the indisputably great figures in 20th-century architecture, Alvar Aalto is in many ways the most humane, the least rigid, the most relevant to our contemporary sensibility and the emerging future. This sumptuous book offers a thorough study of an innovative and prolific master, whom Frank Lloyd Wright termed a genius. This fresh, penetrating examination of Aalto's work and influence includes essays by five notable critics and historians. Some 50 of Aalto's projects--houses, town halls, cultural institutions, factories, furniture and glass designs, and regional plans--from all periods of his extraordinarily productive career are illustrated and described, using much previously unpublished and newly photographic material. This book was published to accompany a 1998 retrospective exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.