New to Old - Western Finland

Thankfully, Saturday did not start until 9am.  This was a good thing not just because of getting a little more sleep but also because no food establishments open in Finaland on Saturdays until 9am.  Sally, Saori, and I went off in search of coffee and pasteries and stood waiting for the doors to open.  I had a strange situation where neither my Nordea bank card nor my Wells Fargo credit card worked.  Thank goodness, Sally was willing to pay for my bread and soda.

This is a relatively recent church which Saori asked we find because she read about it in an architecture publication.  I do not love the exterior of the structure, but find the interiors wonderfully captivating.  It was tied for my favorite building of the day with the Pietla Church that you will see later.

The slate is not holding up as well as one would hope.  Based on the location, though, this might have been caused by someone just kicking the side of the building.

The carillon.  I am curious what the difference is between a carillon and a campanile but not of my classmates knew either...

This design was selected from a competition.  A key element of the competition brief was that the city wanted a church that looked like a church.

I loved the interior!

The seat of this chair is essentially covered in carpet - strange but not entirely bad

Next we went to an early Aalto church.  It was interesting to see a design of his before he "converted" to modernism.  Many changes have taken place sense the building was first constructed, but it was still a good stop.

Yet another Aalto design was this City Hall.  We stopped here on the Finland East trip, but the weather was much more amiable in May and we had a tour scheduled so could see inside.

Aalto and his door handles...

These are the grass steps.  They look like actual stairs in this photograph, but I do not think they were a very good idea because of how unsafe it felt walking on these terraces.

See?  Falling apart

If you look really closely, you'll see Michael actually trying to scale a wall

We walked to a nearby grocery store and had a picnic in the courtyard!  No one wanted to leave the sunshine.

This is the van we traveled in all weekend

A Finn enjoying the sunshine

This church is one of Pietila's most famous works

I liked this church from the pictures I saw in classes, but no image could capture the feeling of the space. The height was actually breath-taking.  Although the exterior looks like a poorly designed dorm, in my opinion, the interior volume is amazingly beautiful.

"Me and my shadow"

We all just kept staring up at the ceiling

Which made Sally look like she was having a spiritual experience

Amazingly enough, this building is by the same architect decades later.  The only good thing any of us seemed to say about this building was that we admired his dedication to design and build something any other architect would have considered so crazy as to essentially be career suicide.

That and enjoying the black lights in the bathroom

I realize I look awful - someone was walking is as I took the picture so I pushed the button before smiling in an attempt to not get caught oddly/freakily taking my own picture in a public restroom.

The end of our day was St. John's church

I couldn't get any good shots, but there were some paintings (which I think were frescos) which were duplicated and hang in the Anteneum.  

The inside of the van

Me dorkily taking my own picture in the van

We returned to Helsinki where I video chatted and worked on drawings for studio.  It was great to have such a full weekend and still have all of Sunday in Helsinki.