CHAIR 11/611, ALVAR AALTO & OTTO KORHONEN, HKT KORHONEN, FINLAND, 1929

One of the earliest furniture designs that Alvar Aalto developed with Aino (Alvar’s wife) and Otto Korhonen in his workshop just outside of Turku, Finland in 1929. Korhonen was a the technical director of the furniture factory and they worked closely together on the Aaltos’s first collection of furniture, experimenting in bending and laminated wood.

Of course this was not the first use of plywood in furniture design but we can see how it was used to create a subtly curved, ergonomic seat on top of a solid birch frame. Aalto went on to design some of the most innovative pieces of furniture of the twentieth century with his development of plywood and construction.