The best standardisation committee in the world is nature herself, but in nature standardisation occurs mainly in connection with the smallest possible units: cells. The result is millions of flexible combinations in which one never encounters the stereotyped.

Alvar Aalto

Categorized in : Cells Connections Encounters

Nothing is as dangerous in architecture as dealing with separated problems. If we split life into separated problems we split the possibilities to make good building art.

Alvar Aalto

splits design art

Form must have a content, and that content must be linked with nature.

Alvar Aalto

linked form

Human life is a combination of tragedy and comedy. The shapes and designs that surround us are the music accompanying this tragedy and this comedy.

Alvar Aalto

design shapes tragedy

The ultimate goal of the architect...is to create a paradise. Every house, every product of architecture... should be a fruit of our endeavour to build an earthly paradise for people.

Alvar Aalto

goal house people

Beauty is the harmony of purpose and form.

Alvar Aalto

harmony form purpose

Building art is a synthesis of life in materialised form. We should try to bring in under the same hat not a splintered way of thinking, but all in harmony together.

Alvar Aalto

hate art thinking

We should work for simple, good, undecorated things, but things which are in harmony with the human being and organically suited to the little man in the street.

Alvar Aalto

simple littles men

Modern architecture does not mean the use of immature new materials; the main thing is to refine materials in a more human direction.

Alvar Aalto

immature doe mean

God created paper for the purpose of drawing architecture on it. Everything else is at least for me an abuse of paper.

Alvar Aalto

abuse drawing purpose

Objects are made to be completed by the human mind.

Alvar Aalto

humans made mind

I tell you, it is easier to build a grand opera or a city center than to build a personal house.

Alvar Aalto

opera cities house

True architecture exists only where man stands in the center.

Alvar Aalto

architecture men

Nothing old is ever reborn, but neither does it totally disappear. And that which has once been [born], will always reappear in a new form.

Alvar Aalto

disappear form doe

Architecture belongs to culture, not to civilization.

Alvar Aalto

architecture civilization culture

The very essence of architecture consists of a variety and development reminiscent of natural organic life. This is the only true style in architecture

Alvar Aalto

style development essence

We have almost a city has probably two or three hundred committees. Every committee is dealing with just one problem and has nothing to do with the other problems.

Alvar Aalto

three cities two

In almost every task involving form, there are dozens, often hundreds of contradictory elements, which need to be forced to work in harmony by man's will. This harmony can be acheived only through art.

Alvar Aalto

tasks men art

Even the smallest daily chore can be humanized with the harmony of culture.

Alvar Aalto

chores harmony culture

The most difficult problems are naturally not involved in the search for forms for contemporary life. It is a question of working our way to forms behind which real human values lie.

Alvar Aalto

real lying way

Just as it takes time for a speck of fish spawn to develop into a fully grown fish, so, too, we need time for everything that develops and crystallizes in the world of ideas. Architecture demands more of this time than other creative work.

Alvar Aalto

creative ideas needs