The Permanent Shock of the New: The Legacy of Aalto at 90

“THE PERMANENT SHOCK OF THE NEW” reads a vintage poster, its letters strong, stark and declarative. It’s projected across a large wall in Helsinki’s Savoy, a restaurant designed by designers Alvar and Aino Aalto in the 1930s. Sleek interiors fit with smooth wooden ceilings, low-hung lamps and neat round tables are now, for the night, the apt home to Iittala’s celebration of Aalto 90. 

The poster advertised – and somewhat provoked – Iittala’s Aalto Vase at a moment when the silhouette felt scandalous. The image shows a strangely beautiful, wobbly glass structure surrounded by classical cut-glass ornaments – a soft rejection of the sharp-edged modernism dominating European design in the 1930s.

Few figures have shaped Finnish design as profoundly as Alvar Aalto. Architect, designer, and committed humanist, Aalto believed form should follow the rhythms of life, not the rigidity of machines. His buildings curved like landscapes; his furniture suggested the body rather than geometry. Alongside Aino Aalto, his wife and equally important designer and collaborator, he forged a language of tactility and natural movement between the years 1923 and 1971. 

Entering the Karhula–Iittala Glass Design Competition in 1936, Aalto carried his design belief into glass. The dominant design language demanded clean lines, clarity and regularity. Aalto’s version of modernity allowed softness, rhythm, and human irregularity. 

Now, in Helsinki myself, I’m walking through buildings, sitting on chairs and eating from plates that Aalto designed. His studio is home to miniature models of his most acclaimed building projects: Paimio Sanatorium, Villa Mairea and Finlandia Hall. Tables are immaculately laid with heavy metal scissors, colourful wooden rulers and pens upon pens. An indoor balcony, designed especially for Aalto to suspend different lamps – all of them on, glowing and dangling from thin white wire. If you pull open a drawer from one of the many low, long planchests, you’ll find blown up black and white photographs of the studio when Aalto himself was in it.    

Jukka Savolainen, Director of the Alvar Aalto Foundation, explained to me that:
“When we think about humanity, as humans, it’s not straight lines, but curved lines that we have. He (Aalto) wanted to bring that softness back. His inspirations, his references, his whole way of thinking come from divine nature and our relationship with it.”

Later, Aalto gained international recognition at the Paris World Fair, where his curves were quickly folded into the visual vocabulary of Finnish modernism. Soon after he created custom vases for Helsinki’s Savoy Restaurant, giving the vase its affectionate nickname and binding the vase to a very particular kind of social ritual: eating, gathering, celebrating.

Ninety years on, the Aaltos’ sensibility still shapes the atmosphere of that same restaurant: warm woods, low light, and architecture that moves in long lines. Animations of the Aalto Vase are projected on the walls, moving in a pattern that is almost kaleidoscopic. Underneath another Aalto design classic (Artek’s Beehive Pendant lamp), a round dining table is set out with colourful glass vases: clear, green, pink, amber, light and dark blue. They are Aalto forms: some low and wide, others tall, pulled upward rather than outward. Each catches the light differently. 

Head chef Helena Puolakka embraces Aalto’s mantra of “don’t forget to play”, shaping each dish with a similar instinct to form, colour, and the way different elements meet. First comes pink pickled kohlrabi with rose and gooseberry, which was cold, sharp and acidic. Then a cauliflower flan with tonburi and elderflower, set in the shape of the Savoy vase and finished with the prettiest of autumn’s last garden flowers. After that, rich and salty wild mushrooms with chestnuts and lovage; strong smoky whitefish with lobster, winter pumpkin and champagne sauce; and a neat, gold-tipped baked Alaska. Everything was served on Iittala plates, of which the colours and shapes had the same instinct for play as Puolakka’s menu.

Iittala – founded in 1881 and now arguably Finland’s most influential design house – feels like the natural home for Aalto’s innovation. Its glassblowers are known for pushing the behaviour of molten glass, and Finland’s own materials give the designs their particular tone: local sand rich in iron, which naturally tints the glass green. The Iittala factory sits in between dense forest, rolling fields and a great lake. Now, in the winter, the air is cold and clean. It’s clear to see how from this place came a palette that now feels synonymous with the Aalto Vase: forest greens, watery blues, smokey greys, and the occasional shade of pink or amber that feel close to the quickly changing Nordic light.

It’s initially tricky to digest that each Aalto Vase takes seven craftspeople to create a single piece. The process begins with molten glass heated to over 1,100°C, gathered on the end of a blowpipe and shaped by master glassblowers, who move to a shared rhythm – a steady dance between different stations. From the glass factory’s viewing platform, you can watch the glassblowers work on a circular platform fit with red-hot furnaces, heavy work desks and deep moulds carved from the wood of black elder trees. The room is heady and loud; no one talks but the fires roar, metal clangs and the occasional piece of glass smashes. With dark sunglasses, flushed cheeks and tattered t-shirts rolled at the sleeves, the scene is unexpectedly rock ’n’ roll. 

Someone equally as unexpectedly ‘rock ‘n’ roll’, is Iittala’s creative director, Janni Vepsäläinen. When the self-proclaimed “disruptor,” stepped into the role of creative director in early 2023, the reaction in Finland was immediate – and not entirely warm. She had pivoted from high fashion, (as London-based JW Anderson’s senior knitwear designer) and not the traditional ranks of industrial design. Changing Iittala’s visual language – including its iconic red logo – was, for some, a step too bold. Vepsäläinen took this tension and ran with it, describing her mission as extending “the spirit of Aalto,” which is another way of saying that shock must be kept alive. 

For the Aalto Vase’s 90-year anniversary in 2026, Vepsäläinen introduces the Aalto Bubble Vase. The manufacturing technique involves applying soda to molten glass, creating tiny air pockets that become trapped between layers. The bubbles shift unpredictably with each attempt; no two vases resemble each other. The result is a texture that catches light like a sheet of ice. “Aalto taught us that emotion belongs in design. With Aalto 90, we’re honouring that freedom to imagine, to move, and to play,” she explains. Vepsäläinen speaks of extending “the spirit of Aalto,” but what she’s really extending is Aalto’s willingness to let material behaviour shape form.

This is the permanent shock of the new: not simply a headline on a poster, but a principle embedded in Iittala. The Aalto Vase continues to change, to shift, to find new forms. That may be its most modern quality. Not that it shocked once, but that it keeps finding ways to shock again.

Kitty Lees is a freelance writer. Her work begins with fashion, often looking at how clothing interacts with fine art, design, performance and food culture. Originally from West Cornwall, she is currently studying Fashion Communication at Central Saint Martins. You can see more of Kitty’s work on her website and follow her on Instagram.

All photographs courtesy of Iittala.