Alvar Aalto in Deutschland: Gezeichnete Moderne

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The exhibition Alvar Aalto in Germany: Drawn Modernism at the Museum of Architectural Drawing, in collaboration with the Alvar Aalto Foundation, presents over 70 works by the renowned Finnish architects Alvar Aalto (1898–1976) and Elissa Aalto (1922–1994) and their architectural office. Featuring original drawings from 14 realized and unrealized projects by the office in Germany, the exhibition spans the period from the 1950s, when Alvar Aalto was invited to participate in the (re)construction efforts after the Second World War, to the 1980s, when Elissa Aalto boldly completed several major projects that had remained unfinished after her husband's death in 1976. The six projects actually built consist of three pairs: two churches, two residential buildings and two cultural buildings. The eight unrealized designs include large public construction projects - town halls, city centers, development plans and commercial office buildings. The drawings show that for the members of the Aalto Studio, paper was an indispensable basis that kept the creative process going. They are therefore beautiful without being self-absorbed: the visual appeal is a byproduct rather than the goal of the design process. The first sketches for each project in particular illustrate how extensively, collaboratively and spontaneously the drawings took place in the studio. As objective traces of thought, they are simply and comprehensively honest and dense. A calm counterpoint to the early, untamed sketches are the carefully crafted working drawings, which testify to the maturation of intuitive, turbulent ideas into delicate designs.