Stool 60 by Shigeru Ban 43/80 Added by Artek

"The ultimate goal of an 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." (Alvar Aalto, 1957)

Finnish architect Alvar Aalto (1898-1976) is universally acknowledged as a landmark figure of 20th century architecture and design; ranking alongside other Modernist masters such as Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe.

This chair was launched at an exhibition in Barbican Art Gallery, February 21st in 2007. It is the first major retrospective of work by Alvar Aalto to be held in the UK. The exhibition is designed and curated by leading Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, renowned for his original use of materials such as paper tubes to create remarkable structures. The exhibition explores themes linking these two influential architects and demonstrates how they share an organic approach to design as well as an aspiration for a humanitarian goal in architecture.

Aalto was as concerned with the interiors of his buildings as he was with the structure. The exhibition also showcases his wide-ranging product designs including his famous stacking stool and other furniture pieces, as well as glassware, light fittings and textiles. Many of these items continue to be manufactured today by the renowned Finnish design company Artek, founded by Aalto in 1935.

Aalto admired the dedication to individual craftsmanship and sensitivity to natural materials that he found in Japanese architecture from the 1930s. 60 years on, this influence comes full circle in the work of Shigeru Ban who acknowledges a huge debt to Aalto?s organic approach to design, sharing his ambition to harmonise buildings with their environment.

Ban is famous for his experimental use of natural materials such as cardboard, bamboo and wood. Seminal works featured in the exhibition include his early furniture designs, Carta Collection (1998) and L-Unit Chairs (1993) as well as his ground-breaking works including Paper Log House, Kobe (1995), Furniture House , Yamanashi (1995), Japan Pavilion, Hanover Expo (2000) and his recent design for the New Pompidou Centre in Metz, scheduled to open in 2008.

Ban began to use paper tubes as structural elements in 1986 when he designed an Aalto exhibition in Toyko. His subsequent experiments using recycled cardboard broke the conventional notion of a building material. The exhibition also showcases his revolutionary approach to building temporary shelters with paper tubes to house the displaced victims in the aftermath of the 1995 Kobe Earthquake. This echoes Aalto?s humane approach to architecture, most evident in his designs for prefabricated houses made in response to the World War II housing crisis. Both architects combine traditional materials with modern technology and experimented with the idea to provide an individual human touch to pre-fabricated housing structures.

The exhibition is designed and co-curated by Shigeru Ban, in collaboration with Juhani Pallasmaa, former director of the Museum of Finnish Architecture, Helsinki, and Tomoko Sato from Barbican Art Gallery.