Alvar Aalto quotes

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.

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.

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.

Architecture belongs to culture, not to civilization.

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.

We should concentrate our work not only to a separated housing problem but housing involved in our daily work and all the other functions of the city.

Once I tried to make a standardization of staircases. Probably that is one of the oldest of the standardizations. Of course, we design new staircase steps every day in connection with all our houses, but a standardized step depends on the height of the buildings and on all kinds of things.

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.

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.

Architecture is not merely national but clearly has local ties in that it is rooted in the earth.

Form must have a content, and that content must be linked with nature.

The very essence of architecture consists of a variety and development reminiscent of natural organic life. This is the only true style in architecture.

God created paper for the purpose of drawing architecture on it. Everything else is, at least for me, an abuse of paper.

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.