The main staircase of the Villa Mairea in Noormarkku, Finland, designed by Alvar Aalto in the late 1930s, remains as fresh as ever. Although the wooden treads are supported by a steel beam, the balustrade is wood. Glass and steel emphasize precision; wood has a softer, natural appearance, which is accentuated here. Instead of using stanchions and rails, Aalto has made a full-height screen of unevenly spaced varnished wood uprights, to which he attaches the bent-wood handrail, whose sharply turned ends are brass. Very different from a pipe rail. Although this house is considered a model of the International Style, the balustrade shows Aalto's ambivalence toward industrialization, and his willingness to introduce quirky design and hand-crafted workmanship into a "machine for living."