Aalto spent a few years in the United States, as we know. Could have become a star there, biggest in the world perhaps. But saddened by all the modern hassle, the abundance of supply in materials and technology, all the inhuman, the narrow, the shiny and the licked, longed to return to the Finnish harshness. And on that basis became world champion. Alvar Aalto has rightly been called one of the great humanists of our time. Man – “the little man” he usually says – is always at the center when he builds. His architecture is never self-assertive or self-serving, is made to serve without betrayal, masculine, moderate and calm. But with a sensitivity and tenderness, which must have had its root in the heart before the hand took over.

Hakon Ahlberg