Aino Marsio qualified as an architect at the Helsinki Institute of Technology in 1920, worked for Oiva Kallio and Gunnar Wahlroos, joined Alvar Aalto's office in 1924 and married him in 1925. For the next twenty-five years the practice was a partnership. In 1935 she co-founded Artek with Alvar, Maire Gullichsen and Nils-Gustav Hahl, became its head designer and later its managing director, and oversaw more than eighty interiors; of the hundreds of Artek furniture designs, only a handful are her husband's. Her pressed-glass Bölgeblick series won a prize at the 1936 Milan Triennale and is still in production. Villa Flora at Alajärvi (1926) was credited to her alone; the Villa Mairea interiors were her responsibility. She died of cancer in 1949, aged fifty-four, having spent her career being measured against her husband.
