Alvar Aalto

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.

Architecture is not merely national but clearly has local ties in that it is rooted in the earth.

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.

Every one of my buildings begins with an Italian journey.

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.

God created paper for the purpose of drawing architecture on it. Everything else is, at least for me, an abuse of paper.

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.

Architecture belongs to culture, not to civilization.

Even the smallest daily chore can be humanized with the harmony of culture.

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.

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.