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. Alvar Aalto Read Quote
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. Alvar Aalto Read Quote
Our time is so specialised that we have people who know more and more or less and less. Alvar Aalto Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
Architecture is not merely national but clearly has local ties in that it is rooted in the earth. Alvar Aalto Read Quote
