Dead | Academician Juha Leiviskä, who was one of Finland’s most internationally known architects, has died

Academician, architect Juha Leiviskä is dead. Leiviskä died on Thursday, November 9 in Helsinki. This is confirmed by his close circle.

Leiviskä was 87 years old, born on March 17, 1936 in Helsinki.

Leiviskä was not only an architect, but also a designer. He is considered one of Finland’s most internationally known contemporary architects.

In spring 2016 At Juha Leiviskä’s 80th birthday, there was a queue of people shaking hands for over an hour.

The party was held in the lobby of Svenska social- och kommunalhögskolan designed by Leiviskä (2009) in Kruununhaa. The program included music: Leiviskä’s last teacher, a pianist Minna Pöllänen held a mini-concert for the birthday guests.

Leiviskä took piano lessons even at the age of over 80.

“For me, architecture and music are the closest art forms to each other. They are the same thing said in different languages”, defined Leiviskä himself. Interiors, interiors, he saw as instruments “played by light”.

Light and rhythm are central factors in Leiviskä’s architecture. So Leiviskä designed the lamps himself for his objects, some of which are also part of Artek’s sales collections.

Bread cake never stopped working as an architect. No, even though the field of vision had already shrunk to a narrow area and the hearing was no longer working properly. As the vision deteriorated, aids were introduced and we were content with the fact that some things happen more slowly than before.

Leiviskä was very open and became more open with age. He was an active conversationalist and moved to the end at architects’ seminars, discussion meetings and parties, so you also met him often.

He also took a stand on current affairs. “The country is full of environmental crimes committed by construction,” he snapped in his 80th birthday interview and warned against one-off compaction with closed blocks.

to the office, which he held together since 1978 Vilhelm Helander’s with, in recent years, younger architectural offices were taken as subtenants. For example Maid Ilonen The stable architects said that the natural mentor relationship worked brilliantly when three generations worked in the same premises.

Leiviskä also participated in the discussion about the development of his school town Tampere and served, among other things, on the jury of the Tampere location region idea competition (2014). He regretted that he never got to do anything in Tampere.

Juha Leiviskä was the only Finn to have received the Carslberg Architecture Prize, referred to as the Nobel of architecture, in 1995. He was appointed academician in 1997. The choice was self-evident.

Leiviskä’s last completed work was a residential building for young people with intellectual disabilities called Kippartalo in Kalasatama, a work he was extremely enthusiastic and proud of.

A significant part of his works are sacral spaces, churches in different parts of Finland. Perhaps the most famous are Myyrmäki church in Vantaa (1984) and Männistö church in Kuopio (1992).

But of course he designed in all sectors. While drawing Vallila’s wooden library (1991), he took into account the fire regulations of the time, which quite limited the use of wood in public construction – now the situation has changed. The German embassy in Kuusisaari was also born on Leiviskä’s desk. Auroranlinna’s tall apartment buildings (1990) are a landmark visible from afar. Leiviskä himself joked that he always drew one and the same house, but the statement was a self-ironic exaggeration.

When he himself was asked which work he considered the most important, he answered that the Bethlehem Culture and Conference Center completed in 2005, which he hoped would play a role in triggering tension and violence in the region.

When Leiviskä participated in Kiasma’s competition in 1993, many people thought his proposal was better than what was implemented Steven Hollin proposal. Another important one of Leiviskä’s unfulfilled plans is the Kajaani Art Museum from 1985.