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Alvar Aalto was born in Kuortane, Finland in 1908, and he lived until 1976. He was a renowned Finnish architect and designer of furniture. His studies led him to architectural school in Helskini, where he graduated in 1921. However, his career did not begin well in Helskini, and so he moved on to a smaller town to start an office and begin his career.

He hired, as an assistant, a young female glass and furniture designer who later became his wife. Aino and Alvar had two children. Alvar Aalto worked in Finland designing several famous landmarks in 1920's and 1930's. He was a professor at MIT in the late 1940's. His most famous furniture includes various table designs and his lamps are also highly regarded.

Alvar Aalto's stamp on the world was not limited to furniture design; he is remembered as much for his lamp models that have endured for over 80 years as for his classic tables, chairs, and children's furniture. His first lighting designs were created when he was still a student at Helsinki's University of Technology, and he was an award-winner even then. He continued creating lamps after he co-founded a furniture design company with fellow artists Aino Aalto, Maire Gullischen and Nils-Gustav Hahl.

Before he even graduated, Alvar Aalto began designing his first furniture. Once in his new architecture office, he received a huge order to design furniture for six churches in Finland. He designed the well known Paimio Sanatorium in 1929. He also designed each piece of furniture in the structure, as well as the lamps. For each structure he designed, he also designed custom "Aalto tables (Aalto bord)" and other furniture for it.

Alvar styled his first furnishings even prior to graduation. His innovative structural design office received a large contract for the design creation of furnishings for 6 houses of worship in Finland. In 1929 he styled the well-known Paimio Sanatorium in additional to all the furnishings and light fixtures for it. He styled tailor-made "Aalto tables" as well as additional furnishings for every one of his structures.

Alvar Aalto named his approach "Organic Functionalism" and as the one who established Modernism within the nordic regions has left an important legacy on the realm of furniture motifs and structural design. Aalto and his spouse also created well-known glassware patterns like the appropriately titled Aalto Vase (Aalto vas). It could be that his last tribute was the establishment of the Alvar Aalto Award by the Museum of Finnish Architecture as well as the Finnish Assoc. of Architects that is bestowed for important offerings to artistic structural design.

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