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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

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Alvar Aalto
Age: 78 †
Born: 1898
Born: February 3
Died: 1976
Died: May 11
Architect
Designer
Urban Planner
Aalto
Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto
Humans
Surround
Life
Combination
Tragedy
Shapes
Design
Comedy
Music
Accompanying
Human
Designs

More quotes by Alvar Aalto

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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
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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
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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
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Architecture belongs to culture, not to civilization.
Alvar Aalto
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God created paper for the purpose of drawing architecture on it. Everything else is at least for me an abuse of paper.
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The tubular steel chair is surely rational from technical and constructive points of view. It is light, suitable for mass production, and so on. But steel and chromium surfaces are not satisfactory from the human point of view.
Alvar Aalto
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Architecture is not merely national but clearly has local ties in that it is rooted in the earth.
Alvar Aalto
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I tell you, it is easier to build a grand opera or a city center than to build a personal house.
Alvar Aalto
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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
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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
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Our time is so specialised that we have people who know more and more or less and less.
Alvar Aalto
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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
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Beauty is the harmony of purpose and form.
Alvar Aalto
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We should work for simple, good, undecorated things
Alvar Aalto
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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
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I do not write, I build.
Alvar Aalto
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Objects are made to be completed by the human mind.
Alvar Aalto
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Even the smallest daily chore can be humanized with the harmony of culture.
Alvar Aalto
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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
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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