ABSTRACT

This chapter describes Finnish architecture in the twentieth century, and to identify its peculiarities. In the 1980s a group of Professor Pietila's former students at the University of Oulu bravely decided to follow the difficult and slippery path of their master. The resulting work of the Oulu School offered only a rough approximation of his design strategies. The reason for this, it appears, is that these former students sought their inspiration from the work itself rather than from Pietila's commentary - the text. Pietila was fond of repeating Blomstedt's maxim, perhaps in the knowledge that only 10% of what he did or said was learnable. For a number of reasons, both cultural and political much of Pietila's work has remained suppressed beneath the surface. Ironically, within months of Pietila's death in August 1993, the American architect Steven Holl won the international competition for the Finnish Museum of Modern Art, to be built in Helsinki.