In 1928 Alvar Aalto and his wife Aino won the architectural competition to build a tuberculosis sanitarium near the Finnish city of Paimio; construction (1929 - 33) had just begun when they were also commissioned to do the building’s interior design. They initially considered using the new Bauhaus tubular steel furniture – they already owned the “B 3” (Wassily) club chair designed by Marcel Breuer – but then quickly decided in favor of wood, “for much of this nickel and chrome-plated steel furniture seemed to us to be psychologically too hard for an environment of sick persons. We thus began working with wood, using this warmer and more supple material in combination with practical structures to create an appropriate furnishing style for patients.”1
The first examples of these attempts were shown 1929 at the 700th anniversary celebration of the city of Turku. In 1933 work on the Paimio sanitarium was completed, and at the suggestion of Architectural Review, Aalto’s architectural projects and furniture designs were shown in the London department store Fortnum and Mason’s. The following year, the new furniture was already a part of the standard program at Wohnbedarf AG in Zurich. As the manufacturer’s export marketing left much to be desired, Alvar and Aino Aalto opened their own gallery and distributing company in 1935, inspired by Wohnbedarf AG in Zurich.