90 years of Artek: Alvar Aalto’s Stool 60 and the origins of Nordic design

“To sell furniture and promote a modern culture of living with exhibitions and other tools for educational purposes”.  As early as the late 1920s, Alvar Aalto developed a whole range of furniture for the Paimio Sanatorium (1929-33) that transformed bentwood into a soft and unexpectedly ergonomic material. Prominent among them is the Paimio armchair (1932) designed to make it easier for tuberculosis patients to breathe through the inclination of the backrest and the design of the armrests: an object in which form and function coincide in an exemplary way.

It was, however, with stool 60 (1933) – probably Artek's most famous and most imitated object – that Aalto made a most radical move. The stool, which came into being when he designed the Viipuri library (1930-35), is a minimal, element apparently claiming no authorship: the three curved legs made of laminated wood become a recurring “module” in his work.

This is how it finally got to 1935 when, in Helsinki, four young visionaries – Aalto and wife, designer Aino Marsio, patron Maire Gullichsen and art historian Nils-Gustav Hahl – became the founders of Artek.
The brand's positioning was already inscribed in its name: ar-tek, a contraction of art and technology, two poles that fueled the modernist debate in the 1920s and 1930s. It was in this climate that Walter Gropius coined the motto "art and technology: a new unity", identifying an alliance destined to redefine design and production. 

Since its swinging beginnings in the late 1930s, the brand has made a name for itself through an innovative and timeless design language: an essential simplicity and elegant functionality that can still resonate with contemporary taste.
It could happen as the basic idea has not changed: such essential products are meant to be durable in materials, designed to accompany people in their daily lives. To do this, the company has woven a dense network of collaborations with architects, designers and artists that has gradually expanded far beyond national borders. 

The Stool 60 (1933) (not to be confused with the four-legged of IKEA Pall Sixty-1 model!), as well as the later 69 chair (1935) are both rational and "empathetic," easily stackable and still able to dialogue with interiors of different eras and latitudes.

Around these archetypes was built a catalog that, from the 1940s onward, was enriched with "new voices." Prominent in the Finnish scene is Ilmari Tapiovaara, creator of the Domus chair (1946) and the Kiki system (1960), a family of chairs and sofas with a thin metal frame and compact volume, designed for the collective spaces of the Nordic welfare: schools, libraries, student residences. With Tapio Wirkkala, creator among others of the X-Frame table (1958), experimentation focuses on structural lightness, while Eero Aarnio is responsible for the simple but elegant Rocket barstool (1995), which translates traditional woodturning into a pop style.

Artek's dialogue with international design finds a decisive stage in its collaboration with Enzo Mari. Chair No. 1 (1974), and linked to the theme of "self-design", questions the very role of the manufacturer: Mari invites anyone to build independently, with a few standard boards, sturdy and functional furniture. It is an idea that anticipates what was happening on the other side of the Baltic through the "Swedish model" of IKEA. "Form corresponds to the meaning of an object and represents, if well made, the highest quality. The problem with form is to search for its essence", Mari writes. In Aalto's furniture, as in that of Tapiovaara and other makers - up to contemporary collaborations - form is never decoration, but a condensation of use, technique and imagery.

In 2025 Artek, the Finnish “dream factory”, blows out its 90 candles. Its furnishings continue to populate homes, schools, offices and public spaces, often with a discretion that makes them almost invisible. Yet behind this apparent normality, the founders' intuition remains intact: to make design an educational device.