Exhibition of Aino and Alvar Aalto’s life’s work opens in Japan

Aino & Alvar Aalto – Shared Visions.
Small is beautiful – ideal homes for everyone
20.12.2019–27.1.2020
Gallery A4, Tokyo, Japan

Aino & Alvar Aalto – Shared Visions. Small is beautiful – ideal homes for everyone, an exhibition of Aino and Alvar Aalto’s life’s work in architecture and design, is to open in Tokyo, Gallery A4. The exhibition launches a three-part exhibition series that highlights the key themes of the Aaltos’ design work. The series is collaboratively arranged by the Alvar Aalto Museum and Japan’s Takenaka Corporation.

Aino (1894–1949) and Alvar Aalto (1898–1976) both envisaged architecture as an integrated whole, and in the 1920s and 30s, a particular focus was on studies of ways of living and related solutions. Small is beautiful – ideal homes for everyone shows two residential projects: the interiors for the 1930 exhibition the Rationalization of the Small Dwelling, designed by the Aaltos, and also their own home in Helsinki, which was completed in 1936. 

“Both sites exemplify several of the Aaltos’ ideas about home design, the requirements of a good everyday life, and a flexible, modern approach to furnishing. Despite being designed in Finland in the 1930s, they still have something to say to us and are also of interest in today’s Japan,” says Alvar Aalto Museum Curator Timo Riekko.

The exhibition’s homely interiors showcase furniture, lights, glass objects and printed textiles from the Alvar Aalto Museum’s design collections, plus original architecture drawings from the Museum’s drawing archive. The exhibition further offers an opportunity to virtually explore the Aalto House in a VR model produced at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Aino and Alvar Aalto’s descendants have also loaned previously unseen works for the exhibition.

The second small themed exhibition in the series will open at the Takenaka Carpentry Tools Museum, Kobe, in spring 2020. This will focus on the history of Aino and Alvar Aalto’s furniture design and manufacture, and on the development of the Artek furniture company founded in 1935. The third and final exhibition in the series will open at the Setagaya Art Museum in Tokyo in February 2021, combining the contents of the two previous shows into an extensive touring exhibition. This will then go on to the Hyogo Prefectural Art Museum in Kobe.

Further information on the exhibition series on Alvar Aalto Foundation’s website here.