Juhani Pallasmaa   Recently I had the opportunity of seeing an exhibition of Nordic painting of the turn of the century entitled ‘The Northern Light’ at the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid. The paintings were cleverly hung thematically irrespective of their country of ori

Antón Capitel   Nordic architecture does not seem to have existed before the 20th century for the rest of the world. But in the era of modern revolution it became a universally admired cultural power, and some of its masters came to be held as true paradigms of mode

Peter Davey   When the Second World War came to an end, the Nordic countries, though still strongly related by similar culture, were in very different economic shape. Finland had fought the Russians twice, then the Germans, and in the process had lost important pa

William Curtis   Eliel Saarinen bridged the continents as he started his career in Finland but eventually emigrated to the United States. With such figures it sometimes makes a difference in which order one sees their work. I got to know the ‘American Saarinen ’ befo

William Curtis   There is sometimes a single element in an architect’s oeuvre which sums the whole thing up. With Erik Gunnar Asplund it has to be the portico of the crematorium at the Enskede Cemetery (south of Stockholm), a work which preoccupied him for the last t

William Curtis   History has not been fair to Sigurd Lewerentz. He has never fitted the oversimple categories which historians and critics have used to chart the development of modern architecture, and even recent revisionisms have had some difficulty situating his w

William Curtis   One of the strongest keys to the sensibility of Erik Bryggman lies in his travel sketches. For him individual buildings were never really separated from the surrounding landscape; in 1923, in an essay on rural architecture, he wrote: “We should under

William Curtis   There are many Aaltos and he remains one of the least touched, the least analysed, of major modern architects. Inimitable as every master, he has nonetheless been much imitated, usually at a level stressing obvious clichés such as his fractured plans

William Curtis   Arne Jacobsen laid the foundations of his architecture in the 1920s and the 1930s but soon moved beyond the obvious features of the International Style towards an architecture of great formal restraint and material elegance, inspired by both the puri

Marja-Riitta Norri   Ralph Erskine’s architectural approach stresses the influence of environmental factors. He listens to users by incorporating them into the design process itself studies the history and climatic factors of the site and develops an overall vision for i

Marja-Riitta Norri   The giant, glittering sails that rise above Sydney's Port Jackson represent what is probably the world’s best-known modern building. The sails rise from a base that is stepped toward the auditoriums with a simplified festivity, as in a Maya temple. T

Marja-Riitta Norri   Urban spaces basking in the sun, groups of people engaged in culture or urban forms of sport or simply enjoying the atmosphere of their shared ‘living rooms'in the streets, squares and parks: this is Peter Celsing’s vision of architecture's capacity

Marja-Riitta Norri   Reima Pietilä, in his architectural poem ‘The criterion of possibility', poses “a moral question -/ what is architecture? / a political question - / what should architecture be ? / in practice the only possible form is that /which asks / what can arc

Marja-Riitta Norri   SVERRE FEHN encountered Andrea Palladio after he had built a private house in Norrkóping in Sweden. The Norrkóping building is a centralised space: it is composed of four wings whose points of intersection are marked by four smaller glass wings that

Marja-Riitta Norri   Aarno Ruusuvuori explained the points of departure of his architecture with the following words: i(Because of Alvar Aalto’s individual architectural thought and his brilliant gifts the field of freeform seemed pretty well full, so I thought it best t

Askim & Hartvig   Norway   The main purpose of the Stiklestad National Cultural Center is to tell the story of the Christian Viking king Olav Haraldson, who in the year 1030 waged a battle against the local pagan chiefs of the region. He died in battle, and under the name of S

Studio Granda   Iceland   Standing on a prominent spot on the banks of the lake Tjornin, the Reykjavik City Hall is formed by two long structures sharing a ground floor. The larger one, placed parallel to the lake bank, accommodates the functions involving the public, while t

Erkki Kairamo, Kristian Gullichsen, Timo Vormala   Finland   Functional clarity and urban legibility placed at the service of an activity that requires fluidity and speed were the criteria that guided the project for this fire station in the Niittykumpu quarter, situated in the Espoo district of the Finnish ca

Markku Komonen, Mikko Heikkinen   Denmark   This project is the result of a restricted competition that was convoked in 1991 and won by the Finnish team, the only non-Danish participant, over Henning Larsen, Nielsen Nielsen & Nielsen, Tegnestue Vandkunsten and Lundgaard & Trandberg. The comple

Tuomo Siitonen, Pekka Helin   Finland   The layout of the town center of Joensuu, in the southwestern part of Finland, stems from urban plans drawn up by C. W. Gyldén and F. Óhman in 1848 and 1867, respectively. Gyldéns town plan already featured the two main axes intersecting at a right a

Ove Hidemark   Sweden   Like erik Gunnar Asplund ’s famous Stockholm Woodland Crematorium, the Lilla Aska chapel crematorium is situated in a placid landscape of hills, woods and prairies on the edge of Linkoping, a town about two hundred kilometers south of the Swedish cap

Carsten Hoff   Denmark   Though with a population of only 4,500, Toftlund is an active focus of culture within what used to be the Duchy of Schleswig, south of the Jutland peninsula and close to the German border The building of this House of Culture formed part of a municip

Juha Leiviskä   Finland   Helsinki's Kuusisaari was originally a district of luxury villas. The German Embassy sits on the southern shore of the island, in a wooded site where one of these villas was demolished in the seventies. The starting points for the design of the embas

Narud, Stokke & Wiig   Norway   Situated to the southwest of Oslo, not too far from the Norwegian capital, the city of Kongsberg was founded in 1624 by King Christian IV of Denmark and Norway, who actively took part in its physical configuration, and true to the Baroque spirit of t

3XN   Denmark   The merging of the Danish gymnastics and athletic associations into a single organization in itself served as an inspiration in the drawing up of the project for the DGTs main headquarters. Situated on the borders of an undulating and wooded terrain,

Snøhetta   Norway   The main cultural contribution to the 1994 Winter Olympics, held at Lillehammer, Norway, has been the extension of the towns Art Museum, an autonomous volume with an important urban presence...

Ingimundur Sveinsson   Iceland   Just South of the Arctic Circle, Iceland sits on top of one of the most active and unpredictable volcano belts in the world. The volcanic activity is directly related to the presence of hot springs in the island’s high temperature areas. The exploita