In Search of Aalto. A Review of Alvar Aalto: The Mark of the Hand

Abstract

Books on Alvar Aalto’s architecture have been published To be sure, the interest in Aalto comes and goes with the and continue to be published around the world. One times. After he had been granted a retrospective at New could ask: What viewpoints remain undocumented and York’s Museum of Modern Art as early as 1938, Aalto’s why should they be presented at this time? Surprisingly, however, there is still room for Aalto research; he is still one of the least researched of the “masters” of modern architecture. A quick search of the webpages of Colum- bia University’s Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library gives the following result: Frank Lloyd Wright, 1139 hits; Growth of a New T position in the canon was cemented in the second edition of Sigfried Giedion’s often treated as a representative of the ‘other tradition’ of radition (1949). While Aalto is today modernism, Giedion’s Aalto chapter reminds us that he once occupied a prominent position not only within the Le Corbusier, 1013; Mies van der Rohe 331; and Alvar international modern movement but also in its historiog- Aalto, 283