Aalto

A documentary about the life and career of one of the great architect and designer Alvar Aalto and his first wife Aino, with unpublished archival materials. The couple’s iconic creations defined Scandinavian design. An exchange of letters between the two Finnish architects narrates their private relationship, how they founded Artek, which blended craftsmanship and technology to create accessible design products, and their relationship with other Modernists such as Le Corbusier, the critic Sigfried Giedion, and the artist László Moholy-Nagy. Suutari’s film also shows several of the nearly 300 architectural projects Aalto completed world-wide: the Paimio sanatorium in Finland, the Viipuri library in Russia, the famous Villa Mairea, the home of collector Louis Carré on the outskirts of Paris, and, among his latest projects, the Finlandia Hall: works united by the importance of light and a close relationship with nature, an architecture on a human scal.