Shingle church in Krsmki by Anssi Lassila: a log-built core encased by a black, tarred shingle clad cloak.

Interior restoration of St Olaf s Church,Tyrv by Ulla

Rahola replaces the wooden interior lost in a re in 1997.

GOOD WOOD
The exhibition From Wood to Architecture
at The Museum of Finnish Architecture
presents 17 recent buildings in Finland,
many by young Finnish architects unknown
in the international architectural arena.

Wood is the oldest building material known

to man the earliest known wooden artefacts
date back some 14 000 years. As two thirds
of Finland is covered by forests, it is hardly
surprising that timber is the national building
material. And as climate change becomes

more of an issue, builders are increasingly

encouraged to build more ecologically. Wood,
a renewable and natural material, has an
important role to play with respect to climate
change policy and programmes, since its use
helps reduce greenhouse gases: the carbon
stored in wooden buildings is kept out of the
atmosphere. A well designed, well kept timber
building lasts hundreds of years and if it
needs to be demolished the wood components
can be recycled and reused.
Although its use as a structural and
cladding material in Finnish construction
has declined considerably over the last forty
years, wood is now experiencing a revival,
with new opportunities for structural use and
surface treatment. This is reflected in the From
Wood to Architecture exhibition in Helsinki. The
buildings featured employ wood in a variety
of ways, traditional and innovative, painted
and natural, from glued timber and laminates
to solid logwork, but always with inherent
elegance and clean lines.
From Wood to Architecture is housed in one
large room moderated by a dividing curtain
of hanging planks of wood that you can
touch and smell (and, if so inclined, swing)
as you work your way round the numerous
large-scale photographs, explanatory texts
and models. The buildings exhibited include
Heikkinen & Komonens cultural centre in
Kuhmo which has an asymmetrically sloping
turf roof growing heather and lingonberry,
the Krsmki shingle church by Anssi
Lassila, built using eighteenth-century
methods, a luminous chapel in Turku by
Matti Sanaksenaho with a timber structure

clad in copper, and the lookout tower in Helsinki

by Ville Hara composed of a strong but light
meshed shell structure of timber strips (AR
December 2003). There are also several villas in
coastal or lakefront settings, and an annex for the
University of Oulu Department of Architecture
by Claudia Auer and Niklas Sands.
Among the larger projects are the Finnish
Forest Research Institute in Joensuu, which
is the biggest office building in Finland, and
the Sibelius Concert Hall in Lahti by Kimmo
Lintula and Hannu Tikka, both of which have
loadbearing timber structures. Timber is an
excellent material for long-span structures:
the tensile strength of birch compared to its
mass is higher than that of ordinary steel and
far superior to concrete.
Appropriately, one of Finlands bestknown wooden buildings is on show in the
next room. The exhibition Returning Home
Sibeliuss Ainola (with the same exhibition
dates) features Ainola, an artists villa built
for the composer Jean Sibelius in 1904 by his
friend Lars Sonck, who, like Sibelius, played
a leading role in the development of Finnish
National Romanticism. JULIA DAWSON
From Wood to Architecture until 4 September 2005, Museum
of Finnish Architecture, Helsinki, Finland. www.mfa.fi
Photographs (clockwise from top left): Jussi Tiainen, Jussi
Tiainen, Matti Sanaksenaho and Kimmo Risnen.

The sharply curved stair in a house in Espoo by Jyrki

Tasa: a three-storey work of art of steel and timber.

Chapel, Turku by Matti Sanaksenaho, the copper-clad

structure will form a green patina to blend with trees.

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