Zitat des Tages von Alvar Aalto:
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.
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.
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.
Every one of my buildings begins with an Italian journey.
Our time is so specialised that we have people who know more and more or less and less.
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.
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.
I do not write, I build.
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.
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.
The very essence of architecture consists of a variety and development reminiscent of natural organic life. This is the only true style in architecture.
Architecture is not merely national but clearly has local ties in that it is rooted in the earth.
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.
Form must have a content, and that content must be linked with nature.
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.
