Design according to Alvar Aalto, a Finnish company
Artek was founded in Helsinki in 1935 by four young idealists: the architect Alvar Aalto and his partner Aino Aalto, Maire Gullichsen, and Nils Gustav Hahl. Their goal was "to sell furniture and promote a modern culture of living through exhibitions and other educational means. True to the radical spirit of its founders, Artek remains an innovative player in the world of modern design
world of modern design, developing new products at the intersection of design, architecture and
architecture and art. The Artek collection consists of furniture, lighting and accessories designed by leading Finnish masters and international designers. It stands for clarity, functionality and poetic simplicity.
Art and technology
The name Artek is a synthesis of "art" and "technology" - central concepts of the international modernist movement that took hold in the 1920s. It was Walter Gropius, one of the main proponents of modernism, who coined the motto "art and
technology - a new unity". Technology was understood to include science and industrial production methods, while the conception of art extended beyond fine art to include architecture and design. Modernism aimed to achieve a fruitful union between these two spheres. This same aspiration guided the founders of Artek in naming the company.
Standards and systems
Alvar Aalto's work is characterized by a system of standardized individual components that can be assembled to form a complete furniture collection. While the origin of the idea lies in the L-leg, the Aalto collection goes further: products can be easily combined and coordinated with each other, formats such as table size and height are flexible, and surfaces and colors can be customized, even for small projects.
Experimenting with wood
Alvar Aalto was fascinated by wood, eager to explore its possibilities, to find out where its limits lay, and to discover what modern production methods could accomplish. In the late 1920s, Aalto collaborated with furniture maker Otto Korhonen on a number of innovative techniques. This led to the development of the L-leg, an L-shaped leg made of solid bent wood that resulted in the creation of over 50 different products. Further experiments with pressed plywood and laminated birch lamella yielded results that made some of Aalto's most iconic designs possible.
