His father's ordnance survey maps and field work outdoors affected the young Alvar's understanding of terrain and the location of buildings in the outdoors. These points were central to Aalto's design work. Following matriculation in 1916, he began to study architecture at Helsinki University of Technology. Important social events took place while he was at university. Finland became independent in 1917. However, the country drifted into a civil war in which young students, including Aalto, took part. He graduated from Helsinki University of Technology in 1921. He tried to make a career for himself in Helsinki, but moved to his home town, Jyväskylä, in 1923. In 1924, he married Aino Marsio, also an architect, who had come to work as an assistant in his office. Aino Aalto became an important partner, whose rational thinking counterbalanced Aalto's bubbling ideas. Aino died in 1949, and Aalto remarried in 1952. Elissa Aalto participated in the design work by her husband's side. In 1927, Aalto moved from Jyväskylä to Turku. Victory in a competition gave him a foothold in Western Finland. The change in location coincided with a move towards a rational architectural language, inspired by Le Corbusier's ideas. He found a kindred spirit in Turku, the architect Erik Bryggman, with whom he made some joint designs. The most important works of his Turku period are the Paimio Sanatorium and the Turun Sanomat office building, which are the foundation of his international reputation. Aalto moved to the capital, Helsinki, in 1933, where he built his own house a few years later in 1936. In the early years of his Helsinki period, he distanced himself from strict theoretical rationalism and moved towards a human architecture, which comprehensively embraced people. Aalto was in contact with the international avant-garde movement in art as well as architecture. His friends included Sigfried Giedion, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Fernand Léger. At first, the architect's office was in his home on Riihitie. As it grew, Aalto built a new atelier in Munkkiniemi where his archives are still located. Aalto presented his house in Arkkitehti (the Finnish Architectural Review) in August 1937 in the following way: "The building is situated in Munkkiniemi, on a fairly steeply rising hillside site, Riihitie 10. It is built as a one-family house combined with the office and studio rooms needed for normal architectural work. Internally, the building is divided into three parts: a two-storey volume containing the work rooms, which are separated by a roof terrace from a group of rooms intended for private use (bedrooms and a hall), and a living room on the ground floor, complete with kitchen and patio for meals al fresco. The work room can be combined with the living room by opening a sliding wall." He also mentions the structure: "The vertical, loadbearing structure is partly brick, but mostly steel columns, both I - section and circular. Horizontal components are reinforced concrete, the eastern and south-facing external walls are timber, wedged into special grooves in the concrete." The furnishing includes armchairs, chairs, tables and vases designed by Aalto, but also Renaissance style chairs purchased during their honeymoon in Italy in 1924. Similarities to Walter Gropius' design for the Masters' Houses of the Bauhaus School in Dessau can be seen in Aalto's design for his own house. However, the incorporation of wood with a pale, plastered brick surface, as well as the seamless union of living and work spaces, point towards Aalto's new direction. These ideas can already be seen in Aalto's own house and reached their pinnacle in the Villa Mairea a couple of years later.    < BACK Timo Keinänen