Kristian Gullichsen

For a boy growing up at Villa Mairea, an essential work by Alvar Aalto, developing an interest in architecture may seem only natural. Kristian Gullichsen, now recipient of the Gold Medal from the French Academy of Architecture, had that fortune, but this wasn’t the only time that his life career and that of Aalto would converge; being an old friend of the Gullichsen family, the studio of the Finnish master was the perfect place for the young Kristian to carry out an intuitive learning of architecture, which he would formalize with his graduation at the Helsinki University of Technology in 1960. Only a year later, Gullichsen would establish his own studio, where his refined view of the Modern Movement close to Mies van der Rohe, combined with an Aaltian view of materials and types, has produced important pieces such as the Moduli prefabricated dwelling (1971), the Civic Center of Pieksämäki (1990), the residential complex Olympos in Helsinki (2000) or the Finnish Embassy in Stockholm (2002). In Spain the architect is the author of the library for the University of Lérida (2003).