Ancient architecture in Finland
The architecture of Finland has a history spanning over 800 years, and while up until the modern era the architecture was strongly influenced by currents from Finland’s two respective neighbouring ruling nations, Sweden and Russia, from the early 19th century onwards influences came directly from further afield; first when itinerant foreign architects took up positions in the country and then when the Finnish architect profession became established. Also, Finnish architecture in turn has contributed significantly to several styles internationally, such as Jugendstil (or Art Nouveau), Nordic Classicism and Functionalism. In particular, the works of the country’s most noted early modernist architect Eliel Saarinen have had significant worldwide influence. But even more renowned than Saarinen has been modernist architect Alvar Aalto, who is regarded as one of the major figures in the world history of modern architecture.
1249 is the date normally given for the beginning of Swedish rule over the land now known as Finland (in Finnish, Suomi), and this rule continued until 1809, after which it was ceded to Russia. However, under Russian rule it had a significant degree of autonomy as the Grand Duchy of Finland. Finland declared independence from Russia in 1917, at the time of the Russian Revolution. These historical factors have had a significant bearing on the history of architecture in Finland, along with the founding of towns and the building of castles and fortresses (in the numerous wars between Sweden and Russia fought in Finland), as well as the availability of building materials and craftsmanship and, later on, government policy on issues such as housing and public buildings. As an essentially forested region, timber has been the natural building material, while the hardness of the local stone (predominantly granite) initially made it difficult to work, and the manufacture of brick was rare before the mid-19th century. The use of concrete took on a particular prominence with the rise of the welfare state in the 1960s, in particular in state-sanctioned housing with the dominance of prefabricated concrete elements.
From early architecture to 1809 (including the Swedish colonial period)
The dominance of wood construction
The vernacular architecture of Finland is generally characterised by the predominant use of wooden construction. The oldest known dwelling structure is the so-called kota, a goahti, hut or tent with a covering in fabric, peat, moss, or timber. The building type remained in use throughout Finland until the 19th century, and is still in use among the Sami people in Lapland. The sauna is also a traditional building type in Finland: the oldest known saunas in Finland were made from pits dug into a slope in the ground and primarily used as dwellings in the wintertime. The first Finnish saunas are what nowadays are called “smoke saunas”. These differed from modern saunas in that they had no windows and were heated by heating up a pile of rocks (called kiuas) by burning large amounts of wood for about 6–8 hours, and then letting the smoke out through a hatch before entering to enjoy the sauna heat (called löyly).
The tradition of wood construction – beyond the kota hut – has been common throughout the entire northern boreal coniferous zone since prehistoric times. The central structural factor in its success was the corner joining – or “corner-timbering” – technique, whereby logs are laid horizontally in succession and notched at the ends to form tightly secure joints. The origins of the technique are uncertain; though it was used by the Romans in northern Europe in the first century BC, other possible older sources are said to be areas of present-day Russia, but also it is said to have been common among the Indo-Aryan peoples of Eastern Europe, the Near East, Iran and India. Crucial in the development of the “corner-timbering” technique were the necessary tools, primarily an axe rather than a saw. The resulting building type, a rectangular plan, originally comprising a single interior space and with a low-pitched saddle-back roof, is of the same origin as the megaron, the early Greek dwelling house. Its first use in Finland may have been as a storehouse, and later a sauna and then domestic house. The first examples of the “corner-timbering” technique would have used round logs, but a more developed form soon emerged, shaping logs with an axe to a square shape for a surer fit and better insulation. Hewing with an axe was seen as preferable to sawing because the axe-cut surfaces were better in abating water penetration.
According to historians, though the principles of wooden construction may have arrived in Finland from elsewhere, one particular innovation in wooden construction seems to be unique to Finland, the so-called block-pillar church (tukipilarikirkko). Though ostensibly looking like a normal wooden church, the novelty involved the construction of hollow pillars from logs built into the exterior walls, making the walls themselves structurally unnecessary. The pillars are tied internally across the nave by large joists. Usually there were two, but occasionally three pillars on each longitudinal wall. The largest preserved block-pillar church is at Tornio (1686). Other examples are the churches of Vöyri (1627) and Tervola (1687).
In later developments, most particularly in urban contexts, the log frame was then further covered in a layer of wooden planks. It is hypothesised that it was only from the 16th century onwards that wooden houses were painted in the familiar red-ochre or punamulta, containing up to 95% iron oxide, often mixed with tar. The balloon framing technique for timber construction popularized throughout North America only came to Finland in the 20th century. Finnish master builders had travelled to the USA to see how the industrialisation of the timber-framing technique had developed and wrote about it positively in trade journals on their return. Some experiments were made in using the wooden frame, but initially it was not popular. One reason was the thin construction’s poor climatic performance (improved in the 1930s with the addition of insulation): also significant was the relatively low price of both timber and labour in Finland. However, by the outbreak of the First World War, the industrialsed timber construction system had become more widespread. Also a comparatively recent “import” to Finland is the use of wooden shingles for roofs, dating only from the early 19th century. Previous to that, the traditional system had been a so-called birch-bark roof (in Finnish, malkakatto), comprising a wooden slat base, overlaid with several layers of birch-bark and finished off with a layer of long timber poles by weighed down in places by the occasional boulder. Traditionally, the whole structure was unpainted. The coating of shingles with tar was the modern appropriation of a material first produced in the Nordic countries during the Iron Age, a major export product, especially in sealing wooden boats.
The traditional timber house in Finland was generally of two types: i. Eastern Finland, influenced by Russian traditions. For example, in the Pertinotsa house (now in the Seurasaari Open Air Museum in Helsinki) the family’s dwelling rooms are on the upper floors while the animal barns and storerooms are on the ground floor, with hay lofts above them; ii. Western Finland, influenced by Swedish traditions. For example, in the Antti farmstead, originally from the village of Säkylä (nowadays also in Seurasaari), the farmstead consisted of a group of individual log buildings placed around a central farmyard. Traditionally, the first building to be constructed in such a farmstead was the sauna, followed by the first or main room (“tupa”) of the main house, where the family would cook, eat and sleep. In summertime they would cook outdoors, and some family members would even choose to sleep in the barns.
The development of wood construction to a more refined level occurred, however, in the construction of churches. The earliest examples were not designed by architects but rather by master builders, who also were responsible for their construction. One of the oldest known wooden church is that of Santamala, in Nousiainen (only archaeological remains existing), dating from the 12th century, with a simple rectangular ground plan of 11,5 x 15 metres. The oldest preserved wooden churches in Finland date back to the 17th century (e.g. Sodankylä old church, Lapland, 1689); none of the medieval churches are remaining as, like all wooden buildings, they were susceptible to fire. Indeed, only 16 wooden churches from the 17th century still exist – though it was not uncommon to demolish a wooden church to make way for a larger stone one.
The designs of the wooden churches were clearly influenced by the church architecture from central and southern Europe as well as Russia, with cruciform plans and Gothic, Romanesque and Renaissance features and detailing. These influences most often, however, came via Sweden. The development of the wooden church in Finland is marked by greater complexity in the plan, the increased size and the refinement of details. The “Lapp church” of Sodankylä (c. 1689), Finland’s best-preserved and least changed wooden church, is a simple, unpainted rectangular saddle-back-roofed block, measuring 13 x 8,5 metres with the walls rising to 3,85 metres, and resembling a peasant dwelling. By contrast, Petäjävesi church (planned and built by master builder Jaakko Klemetinpoika Leppänen, 1765) plus the additional sacristy and belfry (Erkki Leppänen, 1821) (a World Heritage Site), though also unpainted on the exterior, has a refined cross plan with even-sized arms, 18 x 18 metres, with a 13-metre-tall interior wooden vault. The atmosphere of the interior of Petäjävesi church is regarded as unique; the large windows, unusual for log construction, give it a soft light.
Even at the time of the building of Petäjävesi church, with its “cross plan”, more complex ground plans had already existed in Finland, but in later years the ground plans would become even more complex. The first so-called “double cross plan” in Finland was probably the Ulrika Eleonora church in Hamina (1731, burnt down 1742), built under the direction of master builder Henrik Schultz. It was then replaced by a somewhat similar church, the Church of Elisabet in Hamina (1748–51, destroyed 1821), built under the direction of Arvi Junkkarinen. The double cruciform plan entailed a cross with extensions at the inner corners. This became a model for later churches, for example, Mikkeli church (1754, destroyed 1806) and Lappee church (Juhana Salonen, 1794), the latter incorporating yet a further development, where the transepts of the cross plan are tapered and even chamfered at the corners, as one sees in the plan of the Ruovesi church (1776). Historian Lars Pettersson has suggested that the Katarina Church (1724) in Stockholm, by the French-born architect Jean de la Vallée was the model for the plan of Hamina church and hence the development that followed.
During the Middle Ages there were only 6 towns in Finland (Turku, Porvoo, Naantali, Rauma, Ulvila and Vyborg), with wooden buildings growing organically around a stone church and/or castle. Historian Henrik Lilius has pointed out that Finnish wooden towns were on average destroyed by fire every 30–40 years. They were never rebuilt exactly as they had existed before, and the fire damage offered the opportunity to create new urban structures in accordance with any reigning ideals: for example, completely new grid plans, straightening and widening streets, codes for constructing buildings in stone (in practice often ignored) and the introduction of “fire breaks” in the form of green areas between properties. As a consequence of fires, the greatest part of the wooden towns which have been preserved date from the nineteenth century. For example, the town of Oulu was founded in 1605 by Charles IX beside a medieval castle and, typical for its time, grew organically. In 1651 Claes Claesson drew up a new plan comprising a regular street grid, his proposal outlined on top of the existing “medieval” situation, but still retaining the position of the existing church. Over the following years, there more fires (significantly in 1822 and 1824) and yet more exacting regulations in new town plans regarding wider streets and fire breaks. Of Finland’s 6 medieval towns, only Porvoo has retained its medieval town plan.
The development of stone construction
The use of stone construction in Finland was initially limited to the few medieval castles and churches in the country. The construction of castles was part of a project by the Swedish crown to construct both defensive and administrative centres throughout Finland. Six castles of national importance were built during the medieval period, from the second half of the 13th century onwards: Kastelholm on the Åland Islands, Turku, and Raseborg on the south-west coast, Vyborg on an islet off the south-east coast and Häme and Olavinlinna further inland. The northern-most castle, and situated even further inland, Kajaani, dates from the beginning of the 17th century. Kuusisto, on an island of the same name, and Korsholma on the coast also dates from this later period. The earlier parts of the castle constructions are characterised by heavy granite boulder constructions, but with ever more refined details in later periods. Strategically, the two most important castle were that of Turku and Vyborg. The three high-medieval Finnish “castle fiefs” were ruled until the 1360s from the castles of Turku, Hämeenlinna and Vyborg. By the beginning of the 14th century, Turku Castle was one of the largest in northern Europe, with over 40 rooms and by the mid-16th century received further changes to withstand cannon fire. Construction of Vyborg castle started in 1293 by order of Torkel Knutsson, Lord High Constable of Sweden. The documentation for the construction of Olavinlinna is unusually clear: it was founded precisely in 1475 by a Danish-born knight, Erik Axelsson Tott who worked in the service of the Swedish crown and was also governor of Vyborg castle; the castle’s strategic significance, along with Vyborg castle, was to protect the eastern border from the Novgorod Republic to the east. According to Axelsson’s own account, the castle was built by “16 good foreign master masons” – some of them from Tallinn. The castle is built on an island in the Kyrönsalmi strait that connects the lakes Haukivesi and Pihlajavesi; the design was based on the idea of 3 large towers in a line facing north-west and an encircling wall. The castle’s present good state of repair is due to a thorough restoration carried out in the 1960s and 70s. Häme Castle, the oldest parts built in stone, said to originate in the 1260s, was originally built in wood, then rebuilt in stone, but then transformed radically in the 14th century in red brick, unique for Finland, with extra lines of defence also in brick added beyond the central bastion. In the 19th century it was converted into a prison in accordance with a design by architect Carl Ludvig Engel.
The Medieval stone building tradition in Finland is also preserved in 73 stone churches and 9 stone sacristies added to otherwise originally wood churches. Probably the oldest stone church is the Church of St. Olaf in Jomala, Åland Islands, completed in 1260–1280. The stone churches are characterised by their massive walls, and predominantly with a single interior space. Small details, such as windows would sometimes be decorated with redbrick detailing, in particular in the gables (e.g. Sipoo Old Church, 1454). An exception among the churches was Turku Cathedral; it was originally built in wood in the late 13th century, but was considerably expanded in the 14th and 15th centuries, mainly in stone but also using brick. The cathedral was badly damaged during the Great Fire of Turku in 1827, and was rebuilt to a great extent afterwards in brick.
Already in the mid-16th century there was the odd example of importing refined Renaissance architecture principles to Finland. Duke John of Finland (later King John III of Sweden) (1537–92) built refined Renaissance interiors in the otherwise medieval Turku Castle. However, during the 17th century Sweden became a major political power in Europe, extending its territory into present day Estonia, Russia and Poland – and this expansiveness was reflected in its architecture over the next century. These architectural ambitions were realised in Finland, too, and markedly in the founding of new towns. Four new towns were founded along the Gulf of Bothnia on the west coast of Finland during the reign of Gustavus II Adolphus: Nystad (Uusikaupunki in Finnish) in 1617, and Nykarleby (Uusikaarlepyy in Finnish), Karleby (Kokkola in Finnish) and Torneå (Tornio in Finnish) in 1620. All these are characterised by strict grid street plans, which were filled in with single-storey vernacular-style wooden buildings. Even stricter building and planning regulations came with the appointment of Per Brahe as Governor-General of Finland in 1637 (a position he held intermittently until 1653). Among the new towns founded by Brahe were Hämeenlinna, Savonlinna, Kajaani, Raahe and Kristinestad as well as shifting the position of Helsinki.
The Great Northern War (1700–21) and the occupation of Finland by Russia (known as the Great Wrath, 1713–21) led to vast areas of Sweden’s territory being lost to Russia, though Finland itself remained part of Sweden. This led to a rethinking of Sweden’s defence policies, including the creation of more fortification works in eastern Finland, but in particular the founding of the fortress town of Fredrikshamn (Hamina), with the first plan by Axel von Löwen in 1723. Von Löwen designed a Baroque octagonal “Ideal City” plan, modelled on similar fortress towns in central Europe – though in terms of shape and street pattern it was similar to Palmanova in Italy. However, following the so-called Hat’s War between Sweden and Russia in 1741-43, which Sweden again lost, a large area of eastern Finland was ceded to Russia, including Hamina and the fortified towns of Lappeenranta and Savonlinna. The focus of the country’s defences then switched to a small provincial coastal town, Helsinki. However, even during Russia’s rule of Hamina, the grandeur of its neoclassical architecture continued to grow; and when the town was “returned” to Finland, as all of Finland became a Grand Duchy of Russia in 1809, the refined architecture was continued further, with several buildings designed by Carl Ludvig Engel designed in the then prevailing neoclassical style.
Helsinki had been founded as a trading town by Gustav I in 1550 as the town of Helsingfors, which he intended to be a rival to the Hanseatic city of Reval (today known as Tallinn), directly south across the Gulf of Finland. The siting proved unfavourable and the town remained small and insignificant, and it was plagued by poverty and diseases. The site was changed in 1640. But even with a new grid town plan the architecture of the town remained modest, mainly single-storey buildings. However, the development in Helsinki’s architecture came after 1748 with the construction of the Sveaborg fortress – nowadays a World Heritage Site – (first planned by Augustin Ehrensvärd) on a group of islands just off the coast from Helsinki; the heart of the fortress was a dockyard, but distinct Baroque architecture as well as an English-style landscape park were placed within the otherwise unsymmetrical fortification system, all built in stone and brick, and many of the “windows” in the classical facade compositions were in fact painted on. The architecture of the buildings was in a restrained Rococo classicism named after the influential Swedish architect Carl Hårleman(1700-1753). Hårleman had been responsible for completing the Royal Palace in Stockholm, begun by Nicodemus Tessin the Younger, but he himself was also responsible for the design of the grand entrance to the Sveaborg fortress, the so-called King’s Gate and may well have had an input, too, in the design of other key residential buildings there.
The height of Sweden’s political expansion was marked by the instigation by the crown of the publication Erik Dahlbergh’s Suecia Antiqua et Hodierna (Ancient and Modern Sweden), published 1660-1716, containing over 400 carefully prepared engravings illustrating the monuments of the kingdom of Sweden. However, only 9 featured Finland, the towns of Torneå and Vyborg, and a few castles, but mostly coats of arms of the Finnish counties, and depicting them as wilderness areas, or as in the case of the image for “South Finland”, a craftsman carving a classical column in a wilderness. By 1721 Sweden’s reign as a great power was over, and Russia now dominated the north. The war-weary Swedish parliament, the Riksdag, asserted new powers and reduced the crown to a constitutional monarch, with power held by a civilian government controlled by the Riksdag, albeit by 1772 Gustav III had imposed an absolute monarchy, and by 1788 Sweden and Russia would again be at war in the Russo–Swedish War (1788–1790). But before the war, the so-called new “Age of Freedom” (1719-1772) opened, and the Swedish economy was rebuilt. Advances in the natural sciences put culture in a new perspective; for instance, building techniques improved, the use of the wood-burning tiled oven and glass windows became more common. Also the design of fortifications (often combined with ideas about town planning and architectural design) was at the cutting-edge of warfare technology, with fortifications officers travelling to central Europe to follow new precedents. From 1776 onward, the drawings of all public buildings had to be sent for building approval and review in Stockholm, and new statutes were introduced to prevent fires, so typical for wooden towns. Attempts at achieving a uniformity in architecture was furthered by the introduction of standard “model plans”. These were first introduced with the restructuring of the army by Charles XI already in 1682, whereby each of the lands of Sweden were to have 1200 soldiers at disposal, at all times, and two farms were to provide accommodations for one soldier. The “model plans” for military quarters, showing detailed facades and a scale, were designed in a classical Hårleman Rococo style or “Palladian” style, and these in turn affected vernacular architecture, in much the same way as the “model drawings” of the 16th century treatise by Palladio, I quattro libri dell’architettura, influenced the following generations throughout Europe and in the colonies. Among the most influential “pattern books” containing the model drawings were those made up by Swedish fortifications officer Carl Wijnblad (1702-1768), published in 1755, 1756 and 1766, which were spread widely in Finland as well as in Sweden. A particular significant example is the commandant’s house in the “castle courtyard” at the heart of the Sveaborg fortress off Helsinki.
Compared to the rest of Europe, the manor houses of Finland are extremely modest in size and architectural refinement. Strictly speaking, a manor house was a gift from the Swedish king, and enjoyed tax privileges. Later manors, stemmed from military officer houses and mansions from privately owned ironworks. The oldest surviving stone manor houses date from the Vasa period in the 16th century; good examples are the manors of Kankainen (founded 1410s) and Vuorentaka (late 1400s), both near Turku. Also in south-west Finland, Louhisaari manor house, completed in 1655 (unknown architect, though probably designed by its builder-owner Herman Klasson Fleming) is a rare example in Finland of a Palladian-style country house. The construction of manor houses in Finland raises the name of an early foreign architect in Finland; Prussian-born Christian Friedrich Schröder (1722-1789) was by training a mason and who worked in Stockholm before moving to Turku in 1756 and was appointed city architect in 1756 – which included responsibility for training assistants. Among his works in Turku, was the rebuilding of the tower of Turku Cathedral Designing in the Rococo and French classical styles, albeit in a more modest idiom, Schröder designed the manor houses of Lapila (1763), Paddais (mid 1760s), Nuhjala (1764), Ala-Lemu (1767), Teijo (1770) and Fagervik (1773), as well as the Rauma town hall (1776).
Source From Wikipedia