Alvar Aalto, designer

Although recognizing the virtue and modern necessity of standardized designs in furniture production, Alvar Aalto refused to abandon natural materials. Aalto is credited with humanizing the International Modernist style with his response to the bent-steel cantilevered chairs advocated by designers at the Bauhaus school in Germany. His chair, ready for mass production in laminated birch, is a warmer, more welcoming version of Modernism, and his language of curvilinear lines and organic forms resonates with the body. Instead of striving for universality and anonymity as did other Modernists, Aalto maintained a regional identity and paid homage to the wooden-furniture traditions of Scandinavia. Now known as Scandinavian Modern, Aalto’s personal version of Modernism was more palatable to the public than German Modernism and became immediately successful in the marketplace.