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The Idea
of the Northern Biomorphic 1:
In Finland
organic, biomorphic timberbuild architecture is – seven
years after Gehry and blob building – beginning to catch
on. Yet this isn’t Nordic post modernism exactly, rather
a renewed interplay between Neo-Modernism and its history of fascination
with organic, flowing form.
by Oliver
Lowenstein.
Whizzing
past the futuristic headquarters of the mobile phone giant, Nokia,
a lakeside dreamscape of glass and steel arcades and towers in
the Helsinki suburb of Espoo, you could be forgiven for thinking
that Finland is all hi-tech and hi-rise these days. And yes, within
this region, encompassing a hundred square miles and a million
people out of a total population of 6.2 million, there is plenty
of high-tech build and architectural development, more glass and
steel behemoths and concrete, both finished and going up.
But
think again. Finland is a country of lakes, though also, most
obviously, of trees and of wood. Three quarters of the country
is dense forest - 23 million hectares - the largest forested area
in the European Union. Finland is also home to one of the world's
most respected architectural traditions, an architect's architecture,
which has retained its pre-eminence since the country's best-known
architect, Alvar Aalto, brought regionalist Finnish modernism
to international attention in the 40's and 50's. More recently,
with the staggering growth of its telecommunications industry,
Nokia and new media have propelled a recast image of this small
Baltic country into the world arena as completely modern, and
networked: a laboratory for the future.
From
afar, the perception is that this is also the case with timber:
Finland appears to be an ideal location for a thriving timberbuild
scene, out on the frontier of what is possible with a material
which the nation's population has lived with and venerated for
several thousand years. Imagining this futurism living up to its
image, the ingredients ought to be there for a dynamic forward-looking
approach to a leading edge contemporary building culture. Wood:
the largest resource of renewable material on the continent; a
building and architectural tradition renowned around the world;
and a new media culture which, you might imagine, is being harnessed
both for designing this timberbuild futurism and supporting the
research and development for new technological tools to apply
in sustainably sensitive ways. Combine this convergence of new
media with some of the largest wood industry companies currently
operating around the planet as well as one of the most advanced
countrywide Forest Industries Research Networks (METLA) and the
conclusion might be that the Finns should be leagues ahead with
any vision of new media integrating with contemporary timberbuild
and design.
Indeed
it doesn't seem far-fetched to assume that a culture, which has
grown up with, and literally within, forests, and with an enviable
architectural reputation, would be receptive to, and proactive
in, developing a sustainable, as well as, in places, organic and,
indeed biomorphic, building tradition, with timber the sustainable
material par excellence. But - and this is perhaps odd - none
of this has been the case. In Finland, as with the other Nordic
countries, even if timber is a central and cherished tradition,
in the last hundred years it has become marginalised while concrete,
brick and latterly steel have become the most commonly used building
materials. Shockingly in Finland in the last three decades, many
aspects of the timber building tradition have almost disappeared.
Today,
however, there is a resurgence of interest in wood amongst the
Finnish building and architectural community, accompanied by both
a growing awareness of what has been lost as well as the environmental
benefits of the country's largest resource. A wide variety of
projects have been recently funded, showcasing some of the most
ambitious Nordic woodbuild ventures for decades. At the same time
regulatory change, particularly to fire codes in 1997, have enabled
the design and construction of buildings which were hitherto all
but inconceivable. In the domestic market individual builders
have shown that in smaller-scale building, wood has clearly maintained
its appeal. Single storey homes and second homes, as well as the
ubiquitous sauna, are a popular and accepted part of the timber
industry. 90% of single storey, and half semi-detached buildings
are wood-based. But these high levels decline rapidly to, for
instance, a meagre 3% for multi-storey and 2% for office buildings.
Similar low figures are found with other larger non-residential
building types. While there are a wide variety of single-family
housing, kindergartens, schools, sport halls, pavilions, and the
like being built, other building types, such as corporate offices
and public, educational and municipal buildings, which make up
the vast majority of buildings, are few and far between. Despite
the changes, Finnish architects have had mainly to head south
in the last few years to find out about groundbreaking innovations
in timber building.
Yet
the beginnings of a change in approach are becoming apparent across
the board, from Government to Industry and Research, and through
to buildings. Finland is ten years into developing timber in construction
as a prime part of its economic strategy. As a result, there are
examples of changes at the heart of the country's building scene,
which indicate a sea-change in attitudes towards wood.
Not
only this but in this part of the Nordic north, where regional
Modernism has continued in the guise of Neo Modernism, the beginnings
of a revolt against the dominance of the pure straight line, the
rectangle and the dumb functionalist box is beginning to surface.
More than ten years after Gehry's Bilbao and blob architecture,
there are new inklings of an architecture which is, if not Post
Modern exactly, a home grown biomorphic creature, a singular offshoot
emerging from the country's continuing preoccupation with Neo
Modernism. There are the roots of an organic tradition in the
later work of the Finnish architect, Alvar Aalto, as well as his
colleague, Reima Pietilä, and over in Norway, Sverre Fehn.
If these architects worked before the arrival of computer-aided
‘impossible’ architecture and also before the environmental
re-evaluation of wood, this makes for a second possible difference.
This time round, wood is central in this self-organising new wave;
a Nordic biomorphic architecture is beginning to emerge. Indeed
Espoo, beating heart to all things new media, is a home to one
of these.
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Down a leafy side road, in the familiar spacious setting of a
northern suburb, 'Moby Dick', as it is known, sits calmly and
at ease amidst the middle class home dwelling habitat. 'Moby Dick',
so called because it brings to mind a beached whale of the classic
adventure story. And indeed it does, giving almost a look, its
front clad in arctic white plywood, a beautiful series of sculptural
curves giving the beached whale a look of imperiousness mixed
with questioning, cut into the ever-present ground of granite
outcrop. The building is the creation of Jyrki Tasa, one third
of the Helsinki practice, Nurmela Raimoranta Tasa, and respected
master of interior design across the Nordic world. The earth's
rocky presence has been cut into by an elegant steel pathway and
bridge entering, moat-like, at the second floor. Walk round the
side of the building and it turns into something more recognisably
Nordic - Neo Modernism in the guise of two large rooms, one a
protected balcony, its roof-covering pushing sharply outwards,
while held up by two angular steel columns, the other room open
to northern light from large, equally angular, windows. The buildings
two faces feel like they are reaching out to completely difference
aesthetics, one organic, the other pointedly linear and functionalist.
Asked about this relationship Tasa says he "has always been
interested in Alvar Aalto's free-form architecture as well as
Reima Pietilä's organic architecture." Incorporating
a phenomenological experience into his architecture has, he says,
"always been natural to me. In my work I've found it natural
to bring free forms into Finnish architecture. In my teaching
work I constantly follow international architecture; there must
be some influence of international architectural trends in my
own work - even though I'm not conscious about it." Asked
whether the Moby Dick building will encourage more experimentation
with biomorphic and organic forms in Finland and the Nordic countries,
given the current popularity of biomorphic forms in more southerly
European countries, Tasa is unambivalent. "The Modernist
tradition in architecture has always been and still is going strong
here, hopefully though there will be a search for more new, alternative
and multi-disciplinary approaches in Finnish architecture. My
own work tries to conceive this. I believe applying organic and
free-form design again - after Aalto and Pietilä - softens
architecture closer to people and gives more to their imagination."
 
Moby Dick - Images by Jussi Tiainen
The
Finnish wood building community is at odds as to whether it is
a genuine wood building; it won a Finnish Forestry Federation
prize last year but is supported by a steel frame, although the
plywood cladding and intensive use of oak floored interiors, and
the stand-out centrally highlighted stairwell is a further mixture
of hi-tech and further oak usage. Aesthetically the house - which
yes, was built and is lived in by a new media businessman - feels
like a pre-planned collision between Nordic Neo-Modernism and
something of the current biomorphic sensibilities, although the
quality of the beached whale curves contains a restraint which
is the benchmark of Neo Modernism itself, and generally absent
in the flamboyant, showman dazzle of the designs that have been
going up further to the south in the European mainland and across
North America.
Moby Dick interior - Image by Jussi Tiainen
Interestingly, Tasa designed the Moby Dick building mainly by
hand and through model making. That it was designed traditionally,
by hand, rather than computer, is wholesomely reassuring. That
the use of CAD-CAM systems to create biomorphic 'complexity' in
a country besotted with new media and promoting itself as a version
of the networked future, is only now beginning to be explored
is slightly bemusing. Consider how computers are the workhorse
crucibles for chaos and complexity theory, which alongside network
art, seems in Finland to be all but absent. Given that complexity
theory and its entanglement in architecture, is, courtesy of Charles
Jencks the Post Modern paradigm writ large, there ought to be
quite a lot going on. Note how wood, when seen through the microscope
lens, maintains its complexity at each power, while steel becomes
an essentially simple material. Might this not be part of the
ingredients for wood being an avant-garde material? But for a
taste of the Post Modern, the Finnish brought in American Steven
Holl to design the contemporary arts complex, Kiasma - a metal
wraparound sausage - in downtown Helsinki, its all-steel facade
sending a conventional message about what is cutting edge and
contemporary. Yet wood, in its very complexity, could send out
all sorts of avant messages, biomorphic or otherwise.
Moby
Dick - Image by Jussi Tiainen
In
fact, at present, there really is only one timber showcase building
and this is up country, centre-piece to Finland's efforts to fall
back in love with timber. This is the Sibelius Hall, an impressive
piece of modern engineering and architecture, combining a glass
facade astride the updated brick shell of an original furniture
factory, wood-welded together by massive glulam beams, which in
turn join a third section, a wholly discreet inner philharmonic
sanctum, to create a completely self-enclosed concert hall. As
such, perhaps unsurprisingly, Sibelius Hall aligns wood with tradition,
that is, classical music. Sitting on lake Vesijarvi's shore some
five kilometres from the city of Lahti, the building was designed
by two young architects, Kimmo Lintula and Hannu Tikka - part
of a mainly Danish based practice and Artto Palo Rossi Tikka,
with limited experience in timber building. In Finland it is a
definite showcase, the first public timber building of significant
size and scale for over a century. Funded in part by the EU, the
original carpenters' building which the hall has been built upon
is in a rundown industrial outskirt of the city, known as Ankkuri,
part of an ambitious local regeneration plan to restore interest
in timber, both regionally and nationally. For many in the timber
industry the belief is that Sibelius Hall represents a turning
point in the fortunes of their material in large-scale ventures.
Strategically, it is thought, with this building the virtues and
values of wood is being conveyed to the wider Finnish architectural
and building world. "Look what we can do!" the building
proclaims. But biomorphic it isn't. Its glass façade being
as a much a cuboidal box as any other piece of Nordic neo-modernism.
Which isn't to say that it isn't a striking building. And doesn't
Jencks state in his latest edition of The New Paradigm in Architecture
that the crimes of Modernism are partially down to context? With
the present post-computerised architectural world in such a twitter
about Post Modern biomorphic anything, the Modern becomes a minority
view worth holding onto. With continental Europe overtaken by
commercial Post Modernism the continuation by other means of a
revitalised Neo Modernism, even in a geographically remote location
becomes vested with more meaning than formerly.
Sibelius
Hall
As
for the architect, Lintula sees the building as "honest -
everything you see is how it's meant to be", which, with
the large scale surface canvases suggests a definitely monumental
quality, but also draws on the warmth of the timber - thus the
implicit overtones with classical music - as well. He also believes
the building sends out the sustainability message loud and clear,
but fused with varied innovations. Jointing and finishing, as
found in the hall, and here is the irony, are all but alien to
contemporary Finland. In a country with 23 million hectares of
trees it feels strange that the Finns needed to go abroad to find
solutions to realise this project. Much was learnt, both technically
and in terms of fabrication, during the course of construction;
the uses for imported machinery; the introduction of massive wall
structures; new gluing techniques; and more have been seeping
through as influences on Finnish architecture. "It makes
you wonder," states Lintula, over the phone, weeks after
a visit two years ago, "since it represents a generation
who have not seen wood, how you can be ashamed of your roots and
tradition, when you can have very beautiful results."
Sibelius
Hall
And
this is the rub. The Sibelius Hall stands out because it is the
only large-scale building the Finns have got. In actuality this
modern wave of wood building - Biomorphic or Neo Modernist - in
Finland is only in its infancy. Talk to Pekka Heikkinen, director
of the Wood Studios at Helsinki' s Technical University, who,
asked about when the major push towards wood began, points to
the existence of multi-storey buildings, the Sibelius Hall, large
bridges and office buildings, all using timberbuild construction.
Generally, these have encouraged the community, if not the cautious
business sector. "But people, he says, "see through
the examples that there are buildings, and think that, yes, a
municipal building can be constructed out of wood, and done in
the way it was done in traditional housing." Step by step,
Heikkenen believes, the industry is beginning to wake up to the
advantages of building with wood; the false economies, the sustainability
and outdated fire risk issues. And the timber industry itself
has been moving forward in the last ten years.
Sibelius
Hall, he interestingly notes, has been a hit with the Finnish
public at large - not only architects – because of, he is
sure, the warmth of the wood. "The warmth could not have
been conveyed in concrete. So people increasingly feel open to
timber." When I remark that Sibelius Hall seems isolated,
he agrees, that there is a need for a few a more showcase examples
- and mentions the new Metla Forest Research Institute building
in Joensuu over in the far east of the country, which will be
finished over the summer and will represent the newest big standout
timberbuild in Finland, being designed by a young team, some of
them graduating from competition successes. In Finland this seems
to be policy, giving and getting young architects as much support
as possible. How is it that the architects are so young who get
to work and design these comparatively ambitious projects?
Metla
Research Offices, Joensuu -
Image by Jussi Tiainen
Heikkinen
relates it to the nature and scale of Finland's architectural
competition system, which is open to both architects and students.
Historically all architects have entered these competitions, including
in his time Alvar Aalto, and have been able to take on large scale
projects which many of their western European could only dream
of doing. If this is good news for young students, it does leave
the question of why exactly no architecture establishment on a
par with Foster or Rodgers, Piano or Nouvel, has ossified into
place. After Aalto, people from beyond the Nordic countries, both
in and outside the architectural scene, are hard pushed to name
even a handful of Finnish Architects, who have worked on the international
stage. Despite this, what is certain is that in this country at
least architects have fallen back in love with wood. They have
been, says Heikkinen, the quickest to take on wood's inspiration.
And where architects have led, Heikkinen hopes, engineers and
builders will soon follow.
 
Metla Research Offices, Joensuu - Image by Jussi Tiainen
This
is echoed in current student enthusiasm for the course of which
Heikkinen is the director, the Wood Studio in the Architecture
department at Helsinki's University of Technology (or HUT as the
acronym goes.) At present there is a wave of enthusiasm for lightweight
wooden structures in the studio. Two years ago one of the then
students, Ville Hara, designed what has colloquially been dubbed,
'the Bubble', although it's actually also the first Nordic gridshell.
Hara was among a year of students given a competition project
of designing a viewing platform on the brow of the Helsinki's
Korkeasaari zoo, which faces inland towards the city. He came
up with a spiralling timber lattice structure meeting in an ovoid
apex, open at the top to the sky. The form isn't too far from
a reclining, abstracted head, even if locals refer to it as ‘the
bubble’. Hara says that the biomorphic shape emerged equally
organically, out of an immersion with the site, and wanting to
build up from the centre of the viewing area without removing
any of the adjacent trees. In the University's studio he worked
on the slats modelling and building a two-metre model, which suggested
it would be relatively easy to achieve. The model won him the
competition, and Hara continued testing the bending of prototype
joints in the Civil Engineering department. With this successfully
accomplished, Hara and a group of some eight fellow HUT student
volunteers, from all over Europe, set about constructing the real
thing, with two floors of standing space fitted horizontally into
the tower.
Helsinki
Zoo 'Bubble' - Image by Jussi Tiainen
Hara
says it's impossible to repeat, because even this modest structure
was much too expensive to be commercially viable. If expense and
labour intensiveness were not issues, Hara envisages that the
structure would be potentially realisable on a large scale, as
an office block for instance, although acknowledges that there
could be a problem with fire for any larger scale structure. Whereas
gridshells have up to now been primarily horizontal forms, hugging
the ground rather than reaching up, Hara's bubble structure introduces
the possibility at least of vertical tower-formed gridshells.
As a biomorphic form the bubble has an elegance, which while not
at odds with the Neo-Modernism still beloved by architects across
the Nordic world, also introduces the gridshell to these northern
shores for the first time. At present the bubble is, in Nordic
terms, an entertaining one-off, Hara saying how pleased he is
with it, particularly for children visiting the zoo. Whether the
question playfully suggested in this nascent fusion between verticality
and the biomorphic properties inherent to gridshells is taken
anywhere further in the context of Nordic architectural development
is hard to say.
 
Helsinki
Zoo Bubble - Images by Jussi Tiainen
Sometime
ago I interviewed Ted Cullinan about the Weald and Downland Museum
Gridshell. Is it modernist or post modernist?, I asked. "Modernist"
came the immediate and unhesitating reply. Others would beg to
differ, such as the Victoria and Albert Museums's Zoomorphic exhibition
curator. Perhaps we are in the midst of the organic re-aligning
itself, so that there will be many biomorphisms' in the near future;
ones which will bear allegiance to the continuing story of Nordic
Neo Modernism and others which will become exemplars of a new
international style.
And
Heikkinen? Well, he seems delighted with the emergence of Northern
biomorphic form, as expressed by Moby Dick and the Bubble. But
will the Nordics really ever jump to the biomorphic beat? "I'm
very interested that these architects have lost or forgotten the
tradition of the functionless box, and rather see the building
as connected to and coming from nature." As to why it is
not happening at a more insistent pace he isn't sure; maybe it's
something to do with Nordic self-control and the fact that the
Nordic Neo Modernism is "quite simple, quite rectangular,
quite as they have always been." And then he quotes a furniture
maker, "We build architecture on wood, making architecture
in wood." But, said the furniture maker, "we should
make wood in architecture."
www.woodfocus.fi
– website
of wood in construction from the Finnish Federation of Forest
Industry
www.hut.fi/Yksikot/Osastot/A/engl/woodprog/
– the wood architecture and engineering course at Helsinki
University of Technology
www.sarc.fi
- for information on the METLA Forest Research Institute building
www.lahti.fi/sibeliustalo/in_english/frames.html
- The Sibelius Hall website
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