From 1927 to 1933 his office was in Turku. In 1928 the Aaltos traveled in Europe to see examples of the new functionalist architecture. His two pioneering buildings of this period which won for him great acclaim were the Paimio sanatorium (competition 1929, completion 1933) and the Viipuri municipal library (1935; 1927 competition entry won first prize; now in Soviet Union). He came on the architectural scene as a modernist, but a nonconforming one who found functionalism too stark and geometric; he liked to use natural materials and to fit his buildings to their natural settings.

From 1933 his headquarters were in Helsinki. The Finnish pavilions he designed for the Paris exposition in 1937 and the New York World's Fair in 1939 brought him international fame.

From 1946-1948 he taught at MIT, where he designed Baker House, a student dormitory (1947-1948) along the Charles River. It was his largest commission in a dozen years, and one of his first challenges in urban design. In "its bold use of conflicting geometries and an an equally confident handling of the fenestration . . . it clearly outlines the programme for Aalto's direction in the next two decades." Also in its treatment of the cafeteria, it "takes Aalto's interest in the top-lighting of the principal internal function a stage further." [Quantrill, 109-113]

In the post war years he added city planning to his activities, as Finland repaired the damage sustained in World War II, resettled people who had lived in ceded areas, and its growing population became rapidly urbanized. To this period belong his design for the civic center of Säynätsalo, the National Pension Institute, the Academic Book Store in Helsinki, the Jyväskylä teachers' college and many others. In 1952 he married Elissa Mäkiniemi. He died in Helsinki, May 11, 1976. During his lifetime, his office produced over 300 buildings and projects.

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Aalto did not like to specify influences on his architecture. "He dreamed of an architecture quite without style, buildings determined only by the diverse needs of the people using them and the conditions dictated by the building site, the materials available and financial considerations." [Aalto, 13] He grew up in a loving home influenced by 18th century skepticism and Rousseau's social thought, by a humanism which respected scientific thought and invention. In Aalto's architecture, nothing "stopped at its actual function. There is always a humanistic added value, a heightened meaning."

Through the influence of his forester grandfather and surveyor father, he recognized the union of nature and humanity. "Architecture should always offer a means whereby the organic connection between a building and nature (including man and human life as an element of greater importance than others) is provided for." [Aalto, 34] Always, Aalto tried to adapt his buildings to the terrain he learned to cherish in the company of his father. From his grandfather and father he also learned a sense of vocation and civic duty; he could not consider architecture as merely a matter of commerce.

Aalto believed that as nature works endless variations using a few simple building blocks. so should architecture. "Nature is a symbol of freedom. . . . If we base our technical plans primarily on nature we have a chance to ensure that the course of development is once again in a direction in which our everyday work and all its form will increase freedom rather than decrease it." [Aalto, 34]

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Pictorial studies of Aalto's architecture select a number of themes which can guide the visitor to an appreciation of the Abbey Library : landscape and architecture, entrance, entrance hall, stairs, sunken library space, undulating line and space, asymmetrical auditorium, fan motif, detail and decoration to create a textured layering of surfaces, and control and use of light.

In Aalto's designs, architecture not only imitated by developing complex wholes on the basis of variations on a few basic elements; architecture also blended with its natural and humanly-made surroundings. On the east end of the library (toward the monastery) are two large Douglas fir trees. Aalto relocated the library so that it would not be necessary to remove these trees. Other than to nestle the library snugly into the hillside, he provided for no special landscaping. He designed a building which would blend in with the rest of the buildings on the hilltop. It is a building which is very modest in the face it presents from the hilltop mall (photo), but dazzling when looked at from the North, where it no longer competes with the other buildings. (photo),

However spectacular its inner vistas, the library is also understated there as well, insofar as one half of the shelf space is located on the bottom floor, which is not visible from the rest of the building and is almost entirely underground. This bottom floor is primarily for the storage of books; the top two floors are to accommodate human beings who come to the library to study. Although the library is built on a site of great natural beauty and looks out over a beautiful landscape to the north, Aalto was careful not let this scenery become a distraction. For him, a library ought to be "an invitation to read." [Quantrill, 63] One looks out at the landscape only by an intentional effort, which on the top floor involves walking to one of the special viewpoints which look out over the valley, and on the bottom floor looking out means standing up to see out of one of the picture windows. This is very typical of Aalto throughout his career: "Windows for Aalto seem to be devices for bringing light into the building, not for giving views to the exterior. Hence, the extensive use of top-lit atria without side views, the rooflight motif, the famous detail of external lamps to rooflights (photo)--thus maintaining the character of the light brought into that space, the use of screens over all or part of windows to filter and baffle the light--but which also limit the view, and so on." [Steven Groák, 99]

Typically, Aalto makes a sharp distinction between inside and outside. This is certainly true of the Abbey Library, where plain, brick face draws a sharp boundary between the campus mall and the interior of the library. On the other hand, the entrance to the library is an invitation to enter. The outer and inner walls of the foyer are glass, so they present no opaque barrier. The visitor's sight and interest are drawn from the porch right into the heart of the library, past the tear-shaped circulation desk to the circular study area surmounted by skylights. When the foyer is used as an art gallery; its character changes, and it becomes a buffer between outside and inside.

Aalto was very fond of grand staircases. This predilection is evidenced in the two stairs which lead from the top floor to the mezzanine and from there to the center floor. Some of the most spectacular views in the library are from the lower parts of the staircases back up to the upper part of the library (photo). In the work area of the library there is a different sort of stairs, purely utilitarian, without any natural light. But each gray, cement step is trimmed on the outer edge with wood, which both softens appearance and helps guide the feet of the user. On a larger scale, Aalto characteristically uses lighting and the conjunction of rectilinear and free forms to help guide traffic through his buildings.

An Aalto trademark is the atrium, a device he imported from sunlit Italy. In the Abbey Library there is no open-air atrium; instead there is a focal enclosed space through which light streams from the highest point on the roof down to the middle floor (photo). Surrounding this central space (a roofed "atrium")--like the scribes' carrels which surrounded the cloister garden of a medieval monastery--are the prime study areas, the long black tables on the upper floor and the mezzanine which are the places preferred by readers and researchers who come to the library. On this mezzanine are located the most frequently used reference books (photo).

Many of the windows in the library are covered with screens. In Europe Aalto used many different materials for these screens: timber, copper, ceramic tiles, marble, etc. At Mt. Angel he used redwood. The screens are vertical; they windows behind them are successively revealed and concealed as the observer or the sun moves around the building.

Aalto did not like the stark, right-angularity of some modern architecture. He felt that technology had to be humanized, given human shape and human dimensions. One way he did this was to develop undulating lines and spaces, which soften straight walls into gentle curves. In the Abbey Library one sees examples of this in the design of the circulation desk, (photo) as well as in the wall by the computer terminals and the back wall of the auditorium.

Aalto was very conscious of texture. He let the plywood forms used in pouring cement give texture to the cement. He used wood in such a way that its grain and color were visible; at Mount Angel, the wooden furniture imported from his factories in Finland and native Oregon woods are an appealing warm contrast to the white and black decor of the building. The foyer, spanning the distance between the brick exterior and the white and wood interior, makes use of painted bricks for walls and unpolished, earthy brick tiles on the floor. The stands designed for art exhibits are covered in burlap which echoes the burlap on the back wall of the auditorium. Aalto's concern for texture was part of his attention to detail, which is everywhere evident in the library: in the light fixtures and lamps he designed, in the hardware which supports the study tables around the central light well, in the moldings of the periodical room. Aalto did not forget the texture of the books themselves: he used neutral colors throughout the library, leaving it to the books themselves to provide a splash of color.

Aalto's buildings often are built according to a fan-shaped floor plan. In the Abbey Library, the hub of the fan is the circulation desk which has a commanding view of the top two floors of the building. Out from this central node the building reaches in four units which tower over the side of the hill. This fan-shaped section, where all the books and study areas are located, nestles into an L-shaped unit which houses the front entrance, auditorium and staff areas. The staff areas are so arranged that what happens in them interferes as little as possible with the study atmosphere of the rest of the library.

Finally, and perhaps most significantly, Aalto's buildings are a celebration and a concentration of light. Already in the Viipuri Library there are Aalto's principal trademarks in lighting: using light to generate the disposition of spaces within the building; top-lighting marking routes through the building; the use of a sunken level. The aim in a library is to provide optimal light for patrons while keeping natural light off the books. In a talk he gave at Mount Angel Abbey in 1967, Aalto emphasized his concern that people work in natural light. To make this possible in the Abbey Library Aalto refracted light off white walls onto patrons' desks. The study tables around the central skylight and staircase are lit by cascades of light entering the library from the north (photo) as the sun travels east to west, then beamed down from the white wall above to the tables below. A similar procedure is used in the open carrels along the north wall (photo). On the second floor the closed carrels are made of glass, so that light from outside will pass through them into the aisles between the shelves (photo). Even on the lowest floor there are large picture windows which let light into the building, but at such a steep angle that it does not damage the books.

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The Scandinavian Design internet website features a small gallery of photographs of furniture designed by Alvar Aalto. There you can find a picture of the three-legged stacking stools and side chairs which are both used along the library's central tables and discussed in this section. The library also has several of the webbed chairs shown on this page.

Aalto was not satisfied with mass-produced stacking tubular steel chairs. They were "technically rational because they were light in weight and could be mass-produced easily. But he felt they were not rational from the human point of view because they conducted heat and cold too well, their shiny chromium surfaces reflected light too brightly, and they were not acoustically suitable for a room." [Martin Price] In 1926 he developed his first stacking side chair. He produced a stacking arm chair in 1929, and another in 1931-32 for the Paimio Sanatorium. The Abbey Library has several examples of this second stacking armchair. It combined a solid wood frame with a plywood seat. The seat and back were made out of a single sheet of contoured plywood, which seems to ride free within the arms. Both the front and back legs are sharply canted, so that the chair has a spring absent in his earlier designs.

Not long after his first marriage, Aalto began experimenting with wood. "A local furniture-store owner told tales of the 'mad architect couple' who would boil pieces of birch in a saucepan at the back of his store." [Elizabeth Gaynor, 72] These experiments were aesthetic, as well as technical, as Aalto worked to expand the possibilities of wood, "the material which was closest to him emotionally and traditionally." [Göran Schildt, 3] These experiments led to his lifelong involvement in the design and manufacture of the laminated wood furniture which is one of his trademarks. "By 1933 Aalto and a colleague, Otto Korhonen, developed a solution for bending solid wood to create a unique leg support for tables and stools, an ingenious system for joining verticals and horizontals that made the joint a handsome part of the design. Alto considered this invention to be his single most important contribution to the field of furniture design" [Elizabeth Gaynor, 72]

The furniture Aalto designed in the late 1920s and early 1930s included the three-legged stacking stools first produced industrially for the Viipuri library and found throughout Mount Angel Abbey Library. These stools, supported with three L-legs, were produced with different sorts of tops--black, white, natural wood, blue, red and yellow. The library has one stool with a natural wood top; all the rest are black. The same L-legs are used on the end-tables found throughout the library. Some of these end-tables in the Abbey Library were manufactured in the 1930s (several of them have two shelves); others were produced more recently at an Artek factory in Sweden. [Aalto founded Artek with Harry and Maire Gullichsen in 1935; its aim was and is "to produce handsome, lasting household objects."]

The L-leg solved an age-old furniture design problem: how to attach the vertical legs to the horizontal top. Two solutions had been used: (1) cut holes in the top and glue the legs into the holes; (2) join the legs to a frame and attach this frame to the underside of the top. Aalto's curved L-leg bent sharply from the vertical to the horizontal, so it could be attached directly to the top with screws. It "provided a smooth visual transition from leg to top." Aalto developed a special process for forming L-legs. He considered these legs to be his single most important contribution to furniture design. [J. Stewart Johnson, 11] L-legs with a round seat were fitted with a one-piece, cut-out, laminated back to produce a side chair (1933-35), of which there are a number of examples along the library's central study tables.

His early furniture also included two shapes of padded chair represented by three pieces shown in the Library. Both are based on the use of a single C-shaped piece of wood which serves as both armrest and and leg. In one case, the cantilevered armchair of laminated wood with a padded and upholstered seat (1932-1933), the upper end of the wooden base/armrest points up; in the other, the cantilevered lounge chair, laminated wood with sprung and upholstered seat and back (1935-1936), the ends of the armrests point down. As the names indicate, the lounge chair is somewhat more ample and softer than the the arm chair. The library also has a single cantilevered chaise lounge, with webbing on an S- profile, rectangular frame (1936-37), which also utilizes a single C-shaped piece of wood as both leg and armrest. During this period, Aalto also designed cantilevered bookshelves which are hung from triangular-profile bentwood brackets. These can be seen in the public services librarian's office and in the library director's office.

In 1947 Aalto "split the L-leg and turned the two half-sections at right angles to each other. " This produced a a Y-leg, "light, airy (literally), and witty. It is best appreciated when the open space of the Y is uncovered. Most of the chairs in the library auditorium are Y-leg side chairs with leather seat and back (1946-1947). "In 1954 Aalto returned for a final time to the problem of adapting his L-leg to corner use. . . . He now cut his basic L-leg into five narrow wedge- shaped pieces and arranged them in a fan so that the knee made a full ninety- degree sweep." This fan leg is fastened with dowels to the top. In the periodical room there are some three-legged stools with this fan leg; they are extremely elegant, reminiscent of gothic fan vaulting. All these experiments with wooden legs are "products of a fresh, enquiring intelligence; of a deep sensitivity to his chosen material, wood; and of an abiding sympathy with and concern for the needs of the average person, whom he saw as his ultimate client." [J. Stewart Johnson, 114-15]

Ironically, the furniture which Aalto designed to be assembled at a reasonable price from standardized elements to furnish his projects and other buildings has become extremely expensive; the early pieces are now coveted by museums. Certainly the beauty of their design is museum quality. The Museum of Modern Art in New York has 20 pieces of Aalto furniture and examples of his lamps and glassware. His lamps and lighting fixtures can be seen throughout the library; the library has one glass vase designed by Aalto. It is called the "Savoy vase" (1936). It is named after a Helsinki restaurant for which he designed the interior and in which he used it. Critics have seen in its undulating curves the shape of the shorelines along Finland's lakes.

There is a correspondence between Aalto's furniture design and his personality. "I first met Alvar Aalto in 1933 when his birchwood furniture was seen for the first time outside Finland, at an exhibition in London, and I remember that it struck me then how closely the style of design revealed in it accorded with Aalto's own personality. The furniture had a freshness and unexpectedness which was derived from his adventurous exploration of new techniques. It had wit, which it owed to an unusually direct connection between ends and means." [from Aalto, 59]

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It is said that the monks of Mt. Angel wrote to Aalto to ask him to design the Abbey Library because of Aalto's understanding of the human point of architecture: he believed that "true architecture--the real thing--is to be found when man stands at the center." [Architectural Record, 114] If that is so, then Aalto did not disappoint them. According to one critic ( Fr. Frédéric Debuyst, OSB): "Here the place and the function are completely unified. It is the whole, ensemble and detail, which is library, that is to say a place for people," a place where a person can joyfully "explore the world of books, live there and derive from it" spiritual vigor. The visitor will be detached neither from the world of nature, which is visible through the windows and entrance, nor from the world of people "which expresses itself here in many ways, above all by the splendid conference and meeting hall."

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• Aalto, Alvar. Alvar Aalto, 1898-1976. Helsinki: Museum of Finnish Architecture, 1978.
• "Aalto's Second American Building: An Abbey Library for a Hillside in Oregon," Architectural Record, 149, no. 5 (1971): 114.
• Alvar Aalto. Zürich: Kunsthaus. (Mai/Juni, 1964).
• "Alvar Aalto". Ausstellung in der Akademie der Künste vom 17. März bis zum 7. April 1963 (no publishing information);
• "Alvar Aalto, Seckzig Jahre?" Arkkitehti//Arkitekten, (1958): 1-38.
• Debuyst, Frédéric. "The Library of Mount Angel (Oregon)," Art d'eglise 39 (1971): 148.
• Gaynor, Elizabeth. "Around the Bend: Alvar Aalto's Way with Boiled Birch," { } 72.
• Johnson, J. Stewart. Alvar Aalto, Furniture and Glass. New York : Museum of Modern Art, 1984. (NK 2635 F53 A23)
• Korpivaara, Eero. "Finnish Architecture Today," The American Scandinavian Review, 58 (1970): 242-246.
• Moore, Fuller. "Daylighting: Six Aalto Libraries," AIA Journal, 72 (June, 1983): 58-69.
• Porphyrios, Demetri; Raija-Liisa Heinonen, and Steven Groák, "Alvar Aalto", Architectural Monographs, 4 (New York: Rizzoli, 1979): 110-117.
• Peters, Richard C. "Aalto's Luminous Library in Oregon," AIA Journal, 69 (September, 1980): 72-73.
• Peters, Richard C. "Masters of Light: Alvar Aalto," AIA Journal, 68 (September 1979): 52-55.
• Price, Martin. "Aalto's Gift: Concern for Humanity," Texas Architect, 30 (1980).
• Quantrill, Malcolm. Alvar Aalto: A Critical Study. London: Secker & Warburg, 1983.
• Schildt, Göran. foreward to Alvar Aalto: Wood Reliefs (Helsinki: Alvar Aalto Foundation, 1979).

There are many web sites with information about Aalto. Most have pictures of his work. This relatively short list should get you started:

• Alvar Aalto Museum. A good place to begin. You'll find photographs of Aalto designs, and an up-to-date list of links to other sites about Aalto. (http://www.jkl.fi/aalto/index.htm)
• Great Buildings Online: Mt. Angel Abbey Library. The library is one of many buildings featured by Great Buildings Online. Detailed information, an architectural model, plus fourteen color photographs. (http://www.greatbuildings.com/gbc/buildings/Mount_Angel_Library.html)
• Alvar Aalto and a gallery of his furniture. by Scandinavian Design. Pictures of chairs and stools similar to those in the Abbey Library. (http://www.scandinaviandesign.com/alvar_aalto/)
• Alvar Aalto Centenary 1998. A web site developed during the celebration of the centennial anniversary of Aalto's birth date. (http://www.aalto100.jkl.fi/)
• Famous Finns: Alvar Aalto. Aalto is one of a group of celebrities featured as part of the "Virtual Finland" website produced by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland. (http://www.vn.fi/vn/um/finfo/english/alvar.html)

Last updated February 1999