Reima Pietila

Tampere Main Library, "Metso", at Tampere, Finland, 1978 to 1982.

Mantyniemi, the residence of the President of Finland, at Helsinki, Finland, 1984 to 1992.

      map of works

(b. Turku, Finland 1923)

Reima Pietila was born in Turku, Finland in 1923. He worked for the city of Helsinki for a short time before winning the 1957 competition for the Finnish Pavilion at the Brussels World Fair. In 1960 he set up a practice with his wife, Raili Pietila.

Distancing himself from the more rational studies of his Finnish contemporaries, Pietila concentrated on an exploration of the "form of form". This led to a series of complex, impressionistic, free-form designs.

Pietila's theoretic isolation from architects within Finland, led him to work abroad. Much of this international work influenced his later Finnish projects. Always questioning the relationship between architectural theory and practice, Pietila established a discipline for his development of form.

A professor of Architecture at Oulu University between 1973 and 1979, Pietila ceased teaching to concentrate on design. Pietila represents a clear lineage from Alvar Aalto and Lars Sonck yet he diverged to produce a regionally relevant architecture of international significance.

References
Dennis Sharp. The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Architects and Architecture. New York: Quatro Publishing, 1991. ISBN 0-8230-2539-X. NA40.I45. p122.

Malcolm Quantrill. Reima Pietila: Architecture, Context and Modernism. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1985. ISBN 0-8478-0636-7. LC 85-42923. NA1455.F53P536 1985.

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