. it was founded in december 1935 by architect alvar aalto and his wife aino aalto visual arts promoter maire gullichsen and art historian nils gustav hahl . the founders chose a non finnish name the neologism artek was meant to manifest the desire to combine art and technology . this echoed a main idea of the international style movement especially the bauhaus to emphasize the technical expertise in production and quality of materials instead of historical based eclectic or frivolous ornamentation . 1 the original aim of the venture was to promote the furniture and glassware of alvar aalto and aino aalto and to produce furnishings for their buildings . 2 before 1935 the aaltos designs were manufactured by huonekalu ja rakennusty tehdas oy in turku . that company was renamed huonekalutehdas korhonen oy and moved to littoinen but now artek and both companies are all part of vitra furniture . artek have their own in house designers the most well known of the being ben af schulten . the studio was originally set up ostensibly to assist aalto s architects office with interior designs for his buildings . since aalto s death in 1976 the company has sold design objects by other finnish designers such as juha leivisk and eero aarnio as well as vitra furniture . artek s main store in helsinki shigeru ban artek pavilion 2007 contents 1 representative furniture 1.1 paimio chair 1.2 3 leg stool 60 1.3 3 leg stool x600 2 artek pavilion 3 references 4 external links representative furniture edit chairs and table by artek paimio chair edit from the very beginning of his career alvar aalto experimented with materials especially wood and even applied for patents for the bending of wood as applied in his furniture designs and as acoustic screens in his buildings . the aaltos designed several different types of furniture and lamps for the paimio sanatorium 1929 33 . the best known of the furniture pieces is his cantilevered birch wood paimio chair which was specifically designed for tuberculosis patients to sit in for long hours each day . aalto argued that the angle of the back of the chair was the perfect angle for the patient to breathe most easily . the design of the chair may have been influenced by marcel breuer s metal wassily chair though aalto was generally negative towards metal furniture . 3 the degree of bending of the wood tested the technical limits of that time . the chair is part of the permanent collections at the moma in new york city and the finnish design museum . 3 leg stool 60 edit the model no. 60 stool designed circa 1932 1933 demonstrated alvar aalto s interest in basic functional utilitarian forms . it was constructed of bent laminated birch and originally came in all natural plain or curled birch or with a black red or blue seat with natural plain legs . 3 leg stool x600 edit the x600 evolved from the 60 . the handmade legs have the portions attached to the seat opening up into a fan showing simultaneously the bent wood characteristic of artek furniture and the fan motif that runs through aalto s architecture . artek pavilion edit in 2007 japanese architect shigeru ban designed an exhibition pavilion for artek built from reconstituted waste material provided by the finnish paper manufacturer upm . the pavilion was first used at the milan triennale in 2007 after which it was temporally in use outside the design museum helsinki . references edit thomas kellein editor alvar & aino aalto design . hatje cantz publishers 2005 . g ran schildt alvar aalto . a life s work architecture design and art . otava helsinki 1994 bayley stephen conran terance design intelligence made visible . firefly books . 2007 pp. 63 64 external links edit company home page retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title artek company & oldid 742955078 categories chairsfinnish brandsfinnish culturefurniture manufacturersindustrial design firmsmanufacturing companies of finlandalvar aalto navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages deutschespa olfran aisitalianonorsk bokm lrom n suomisvenska edit links this page was last modified on 6 october 2016 at 21 19 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; additional terms may apply . by using this site you agree to the terms of use and privacy policy . wikipedia is a registered trademark of the wikimedia foundation inc. a non profit organization . privacy policy about wikipedia disclaimers contact wikipedia developers cookie statement mobile view