Personal favorite architects

Aalto, Alvar (1898–1976).

Finnish architect, designer, sculptor, and painter. Aalto is principally renowned as one of the greatest architects of the 20th century, but he was also an important furniture designer and a talented abstract sculptor and painter. His early buildings were predominantly in the sleek International Modern style (see MODERN MOVEMENT), but he developed a much freer and more expressive manner. He had an international reputation by the late 1930s (an exhibition of his work was held in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1938) and after the Second World War several of his most important commissions came from abroad, particularly the USA (he was professor of architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1945 to 1949). Appropriately for an artist who came from a land of forests, Aalto made extensive use of timber in his work, and in 1933 he patented a method of bending plywood for furniture. He not only furnished his own buildings, but also produced his designs commercially, founding a firm called Artek in 1935 to manufacture and distribute them. Completely free of ornament, his designs were well suited to mass production, and their flowing lines became internationally popular. As well as furniture, Artek manufactured fabrics and light fittings and in the 1930s Aalto also designed some excellent glassware. In the same period he engaged in what have been described as artistic laboratory experiments, using laminated wood to make abstract reliefs and free-standing sculptures, characterized by irregularly curved forms. These sculptural experiments served the dual purpose of solving technical problems concerning the pliancy of wood relevant to the manufacture of furniture and of developing spatial ideas for Aalto's architectural work (ideas that received their fullest expression after the Second World War, as in the Edgar J. Kaufmann Conference Rooms at the Institute of International Education in New York (1965), where the wooden interior walls are conceived as abstract sculptural reliefs). In the 1950s Aalto took up sculpture on a large scale, working in bronze, marble, and mixed media. His outstanding work in this field is his memorial (1960) for the Battle of Suomussalmi, a leaning bronze pillar on a stone pedestal set up in the arctic wastes of the battlefield (a Finnish victory against the Soviet Union in 1939–40). Aalto was noteworthy also for helping to introduce modern art to the Finnish public, particularly the works of his close friends Calder and Léger.

Couple of interesting pages for information

1. http://books.google.co.za/books?id=5-sMtKveQL4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=what+is+architecture&source=bl&ots=WYz-kl5ZJq&sig=wdMwOKvjA2e-uHLxcL7fTAO8IK0&hl=en&ei=IL7sTKn5CMOfOsDRqbAB&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false
2. http://books.google.co.za/books?id=pZ50MeEQRAoC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
3. http://books.google.co.za/books?id=uz2zg7nSDQEC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
4. http://books.google.co.za/books?id=cQ_vBJasKYoC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
5. http://books.google.co.za/books?id=4JQKFqe9m-wC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
6. http://books.google.co.za/books?id=0rC6ezoGHcMC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
7. http://books.google.co.za/books?id=5ja-3GavJssC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
8. http://books.google.co.za/books?id=pZ50MeEQRAoC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Frank Lloyd Wright on Architecture

Here's what the American architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, had to say about Architecture:

"What is architecture anyway? Is it the vast collection of the various buildings which have been built to please the varying taste of the various lords of mankind? I think not.

"No, I know that architecture is life; or at least it is life itself taking form and therefore it is the truest record of life as it was lived in the world yesterday, as it is lived today or ever will be lived. So architecture I know to be a Great Spirit....

"Architecture is that great living creative spirit which from generation to generation, from age to age, proceeds, persists, creates, according to the nature of man, and his circumstances as they change. That is really architecture."

—Frank Lloyd Wright, from In the Realm of Ideas

What is architecture?

1. The discipline dealing with the principles of design and construction and ornamentation of fine buildings; "architecture and eloquence are mixed arts whose end is sometimes beauty and sometimes use"
2. The profession of designing buildings and environments with consideration for their aesthetic effect
3. Architecture (Latin „architectura“, from the Greek „arkitekton“, ὰρχιτεκτονική – arkhitektonike, from ὰρχι chief or leader and Τεκτονική builder or carpenter) is the art and science of designing buildings and other physical structures.
   en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture
4. Architecture is the imaginative blend of art and science in the design of environments for people. People need places to eat, work, live and play. Architects transform these needs into concepts and then develop the concepts into building images that can be constructed by others. These projects can be as small as an entrance way and as large as an entire college campus—and everything in between.An architect serves in a leadership role to bring together the design and budgetary requirements set by the client, restraints of a site (where the building will be constructed), needs of the building’s users, and the limitations of materials into a unique and balanced design solution. Decision-making, team leadership and creativity are the key elements of making architecture.Succinctly put, an architect is a licensed professional with specialized skills who designs buildings and cityscapes and helps make real the unique vision of their clients and communities.
5. Architecture is a process of organizing spaces which are largely dependent on Man's capability of applying technological skills along with aesthetics. Interestingly, both technology and aesthetics keep changing, resulting in various styles throughout its evolutionary process. But now it's not only buildings but also its setting which is in the purview of architecture. Certainly what makes a good architecture is its capacity to remain timeless.—Guest bipin malik