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Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto was a Finnish architect and designer. His work includes architecture, furniture, textiles and glassware, as well as sculptures and paintings. He never regarded himself as an artist, seeing painting and sculpture as "branches of the tree whose trunk is architecture." Aalto's early career ran in parallel with the rapid economic growth and industrialization of Finland during the first half of the 20th century. Many of his clients were industrialists, among them the Ahlström-Gullichsen family. The span of his career, from the 1920s to the 1970s, is reflected in the styles of his work, ranging from Nordic Classicism of the early work, to a rational International Style Modernism during the 1930s to a more organic modernist style from the 1940s onwards. Typical for his entire career is a concern for design as a Gesamtkunstwerk, a total work of art, in which he – together with his first wife Aino Aalto – would design the building, and give special treatment to the interior surfaces, furniture, lamps and glassware. His furniture designs are considered Scandinavian Modern, in the sense of a concern for materials, especially wood, and simplification but also technical experimentation, which led him to receiving patents for various manufacturing processes, such as bent wood. As a designer he is celebrated as the inventor of bent plywood furniture. The Alvar Aalto Museum, designed by Aalto himself, is located in what is regarded as his home city Jyväskylä.
Eero Saarinen was a Finnish-American architect and industrial designer noted for his wide-ranging array of designs for buildings and monuments. Saarinen is best known for designing the Washington Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C., the TWA Flight Center in New York City, and the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri. He was the son of noted Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen.
Florence Marguerite Knoll Bassett was an American architect, interior designer, furniture designer, and entrepreneur who has been credited with revolutionizing office design and bringing modernist design to office interiors. Knoll and her husband, Hans Knoll, built Knoll Associates into a leader in the fields of furniture and interior design. She worked to professionalize the field of interior design, fighting against gendered stereotypes of the decorator. She is known for her open office designs, populated with modernist furniture and organized rationally for the needs of office workers. Her modernist aesthetic was known for clean lines and clear geometries that were humanized with textures, organic shapes, and colour.
Yrjö Kalervo Sotamaa is a Finnish designer and design strategist. Sotamaa is Professor Emeritus of Design Innovation in the Aalto University School of Art, Design and Architecture and President Emeritus of the University of Art and Design Helsinki (TAIK). He served as the President of TAIK from 1986 until 2008. He earned his MA in Interior Architecture and Furniture Design from TAIK, where he studied with Kaj Franck and Antti Nurmesniemi.
Aino Maria Marsio-Aalto was a Finnish architect and a pioneer of Scandinavian design. She is known as a co-founder of the design company Artek and as a collaborator on its most well-known designs. As Artek's first artistic director, her creative output spanned textiles, lamps, glassware, and buildings. It has been discovered that it was Aino who completed the first work commissioned through Artek which was the Viipuri Library in 1935. Her work is in the MoMA's permanent collection and the MoMA has included her work in 9 exhibitions. Aino Aalto’s first exhibition was Art in Progress: 15th Anniversary Exhibitions: Design for Use at Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, NY in 1944. Other major exhibitions were at Barbican Art Gallery in London and Chelsea space in London. Aino Aalto has been exhibited with Pablo Picasso.
Artek is a Finnish furniture company. It was founded in December 1935 by architect Alvar Aalto and his wife Aino Aalto, visual arts promoter Maire Gullichsen and art historian Nils-Gustav Hahl. The founders chose a non-Finnish name: the neologism Artek was meant to manifest the desire to combine art and technology. This echoed a main idea of the International Style movement, especially the Bauhaus, to emphasize the technical expertise in production and quality of materials, instead of historical-based, eclectic or frivolous ornamentation.
Scandinavian design is a design movement characterized by simplicity, minimalism and functionality that emerged in the early 20th century, and subsequently flourished in the 1950s throughout the five Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland.
Juha Ilmari Leiviskä is a prominent Finnish architect and designer. He is especially known for his churches and other sacral buildings.
Iittala, founded as a glassworks in 1881, is a Finnish design brand specialising in design objects, tableware and cookware. Iittala's official i-logo was designed by Timo Sarpaneva in 1956.
Roger Connah is a Welsh writer, and independent scholar based in Ruthin, North Wales, and has taught for over three decades in Finland, India, Pakistan, Sweden, Canada, and the United States. He is currently professor of architecture at the Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.
Kari Aaro Juhani Asikainen is a Finnish interior designer and former Professor of Industrial Furniture Design at MUOVA, the Design Centre of Western Finland in Vaasa, 1988–1994. He also taught at University of Art and Design Helsinki in 1973–1988.
Olli Mannermaa (1921–1998) was a Finnish interior architect. He was born in Turku.
Jukka Setala is a Finnish designer. He completed his study as an interior architect at the University of Art and Design Helsinki in 1996. He designed a notable lamp but he is best known for his "Fatboy" beanbag chairs.
Erik Stefan Lindfors, known as Stefan Lindfors is a Finnish industrial designer, interior designer, film-maker and sculptor. He attended high school at the Åbo Cathedral School in Turku in 1982, and then went on to study design at the University of Art and Design Helsinki, completing his studies in 1988.
Olavi Hänninen was a Finnish designer and interior architect. Hänninen's design projects ranged from furniture to trams and church silverware, including total interior designs for many public facilities. His modernist designs also included tables and chairs, and he was well recognized for his work on the Palace Hotel interiors together with Antti Nurmesniemi and Olli Borg. Hänninen designed a renowned plastic chair with metal structure for the hotel's cafe. In the 1970s his designs included the new Valmet Nr I trams for Helsinki City Transport.
Kristiina Lassus is a Finnish product designer and interior architect. Kristiina Lassus graduated from the University of Industrial Arts of Helsinki (UIAH) with a Master of Arts (MA) in Design Leadership in 1992 and further specialized in product development at the Helsinki University of Technology in 1993. She had her second MA in Interior Architecture and Furniture Design from the UIAH in 1995.
Pekka Salminen is a Finnish Professor of Architecture and founder and a senior partner of PES-Architects, formed in 1968, in Helsinki, Finland. He is also the founder of Unije Workshop International UWI, and the Centre for Architecture and Urban Planning, formed in Unije, Croatia, in 1987.
JKMM Architects is a Finnish architectural firm. Asmo Jaaksi, Teemu Kurkela, Samuli Miettinen and Juha Mäki-Jyllilä established JKMM Architects in 1998. They started their studies in the middle of eighties. From the beginning, architectural innovation has been the driving force of their work. Studio's design approach reflects Scandinavian values and aesthetics. Their goal is to make architecture with exceptional architectural and technical quality. Over the years JKMM has grown and it employs over 80 professionals. They operate actively in various areas and scales of architecture designing buildings, interiors, furniture, urban environments as well as renovations.
Lars-Gunnar Nordström was a Finnish artist, one of the leading pioneers of non-representational art in Finland. His genre of art, concretism, is characterized by an extremely precise, finished, deliberate visual expression. Nordström is particularly known for his geometric paintings, in which angular and curved flat colour fields form clear, strong, dynamic compositions. His oeuvre consists mainly of graphic prints, paintings and sculptures.
Väino Tamm was an Estonian interior designer, vice associate professor in ERKI in from 1959 and interior design department manager in 1968–1986, from 1970 he was the associate professor of the interior design department in ERKI. He was one of the firsts to pave the way to the interior design department as we know it today. Väino Tamm changed the spatial design profession into a subject that deals with problems involving interior design and instead of decorating the space on the contrary dealing with arranging it. Also dealing with an overall effect and the room's whole impact on a person.