Alvar Aalto In His Own Words [Illustrated] [Hardcover]

Goran Schildt (Author)

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The year 1998 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Finnish architect Alvar Aalto, and this book of his writings is one of many publications and exhibitions designed to commemorate it. Editor Goran Schildt is Aalto's official biographer. He has compiled a lifetime of Aalto's thoughts, and provided all the connective tissue a reader needs to place those thoughts in context. The architect, he says, "shunned the role of prophet and was averse to the abstract hair-splitting practised by art critics today." Instead, he was "a social creature," whose "gift of doubt" sets him apart from pontificators of all eras.

Aalto's writings are filled with theories--many profoundly idealistic--that are part of a less cynical age, when humanists believed that social change through culture was an imminent likelihood. Priceless passages abound, not all of them about architecture. Aalto writes with high spirits about setting toilet-paper bonfires with his two brothers in childhood, for instance, or drunken parties with poets, artists, and other architects (notably his teacher, Eliel Saarinen). Aalto's famously lithe and accomplished pencil drawings, which prove the artist in the architect, illustrate the book, along with photographs of his buildings.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 280 pages
• Publisher: Rizzoli International Publications (June 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0847820807
• ISBN-13: 978-0847820801
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #521,518 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars the whole truth, May 21, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Alvar Aalto In His Own Words (Hardcover)

For the life of me I can't think why anyone found Aki_Lehti's review (see reviewer below) unhelpful. I have this excellent volume, and as with any book which attempts to give us the wider story of how the work was a product of its author these essays give so much. Aalto was clearly not a man of few words, as we have been led to believe. And we can clearly follow a change in his attitudes from great optimism for the future of architecture to a more aestheticist almost monumental point of view - architecture as a saving monumental grace. But should I be affronted if I have to hold my judgement in suspension in the knowledge that the objective knowledge before me might not be the whole truth, as Aki_Lehto states? It is indeed infuriating. I want to put aside such irritations. But seeing as the source for such a statement is none other than experts from Aalto's home country, who know the original sources, I feel that I have to retain these provisos and I thank Aki_Lehti for that.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Edited to death, January 18, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Alvar Aalto In His Own Words (Hardcover)

One doesn't want to be critical of such a seeming simple and brilliant idea: to gather together Aalto's writings in one volume. Without doubt such a volume has been necessary, and long over due, and it goes towards squashing the long-standing view that Aalto was a man of few words. The writings in this volume (which came out simultaneously in Finnish and English language versions) give a good view of Aalto's clear understanding of architecture's role in society. However, and for scholars here comes the big BUT, since the publication it has materialised, as brought up in the Finnish press and by various Finnish historians, that Schildt's "editing" has been very heavy-handed, including "correcting" Aalto on points of "fact". Very often hardly a paragraph is as Aalto wrote it. To be sure, some sort of editing is always necessary (others claim that one should include as much as possible); but with historians' keeness to put the architects' words next to the designs, this is going to lead to a mis-representation. As some Finnish historians have put it, this is a good sampler, but we must wait for a better and more fuller version!

2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful compendium of Aalto's architectural thoughts., November 23, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Alvar Aalto In His Own Words (Hardcover)

The modernist's writtings and speeches comprise the depth of "Alvar Aalto in His Own Words." Not only is it a great source of information about the theories and architectural thoughts of a modernist master, it is also good reading. I highly recommend this book to students of architecture and those interested in humanist design.