Voting Station

Alvar Aalto

Please vote to see the next celebrity.

Architect

The Resume

    (February 3, 1898-May 11, 1976)
    Born in Kuortane, Finland
    Birth name was Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto
    Architect, furniture designer, and glassware designer
    Furniture designs include the paimio scroll chair and model 60 stacking stool
    Notable buildings include Viipuri Municipal Library (1935), the Finnish Pavilions at the Paris Worlds Fair (1937) and New York Worlds Fair (1939), Baker House at MIT (1948), Experimental House (1953), the House of Culture in Helsinki (1958), Nordic House in Reykjavik (1968), and Finlandia Hall in Helsinki (1971)

Why he might be annoying:

    If he had gone by his full name, his initials would have been 'HA HA.'
    He got several of his early commissions from friends of the family.
    He lost two competitions to design the Finnish Parliament building (1923-24).
    He tried to mold his second wife into a duplicate of his first, including changing her hairstyle and insisting that she only wear black and white.

Why he might not be annoying:

    He was the second architect, after Le Corbusier, to have a solo exhibition at the MOMA.
    Frank Lloyd Wright called the Finnish Pavilion at the 1939 Worlds Fair 'a work of genius.'
    He popularized modern art, particularly the works of Alexander Calder and Ferdinand Leger, in Finland.
    He designed many of the buildings for the Helsinki University of Technology, which would later merge with two other schools to form Aalto University (2010).

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 6 Votes: 33.33% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 3 Votes: 33.33% Annoying