Alvar Aalto & Marcel Breuer

Armchair 41, 1930
Alvar Aalto sometimes called the "Father of Modernism"experimented with materials, especially wood, and even applied for patents for the bending of wood as applied in his furniture designs and as acoustic screens in his buildings. The design of the chair may have been influenced by Marcel Breuer's metal Wassily Chair, though Aalto was generally negative towards metal furniture. The degree of bending of the wood tested the technical limits of that time.







Wassily chair, 1925-26
This chair was revolutionary in the use of the materials (bent tubular steel and canvas) and methods of manufacturing. It is said that the handlebar of Breuer's 'Adler bicycle inspired him to use steel tubing to build the chair, and it proved to be an appropriate material because it was available in quantity. The design (and all subsequent steel tubing furniture) was technologically feasible only because the German steel manufacturer Mannesmann had recently perfected a process for making seamless steel tubing. Previously, steel tubing had a welded seam, which would collapse when the tubing was bent.