Alvar

Or al·var

[ahl-vahr]

noun

Hinduism.

1. (in southern India) a holy person of the Vaishnava sect.

Word History and Origins

Origin of Alvar¹

From Tamil āl̤vār, derivative of ār̤- “sink, be absorbed (as in contemplation)”

Example Sentences

“The valley can still thrive with less water,” said Alvar Escriva-Bou, a senior fellow at the institute.

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Both the dining hall and academic office building have facades of glass and concrete reminiscent of the work of Le Corbusier, one of Mr. Geddes’s idols alongside Louis Kahn and Alvar Aalto — all modernists who knew how to make spaces inviting.

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In 1981 he completed his studio, a cluster of rectangular rooms under semicircular vaults that held clear references to the work of Le Corbusier, Louis Kahn, Frank Lloyd Wright, Alvar Aalto and Antoni Gaudi.

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During her marriage to the German actor Mathieu Carrière, from 1983 to 1993, she lived half the year in a large Paris apartment — furnished almost entirely in modernist designs by the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto — in a building where “Last Tango in Paris” was filmed, as she rarely failed to tell anyone who visited.

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The British designer Ilse Crawford once covered a midcentury Alvar Aalto armchair in reindeer skin.

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