Reima and Raili Pietilä

Raili Pietilä
Raili Pietilä
Born	Raili Inkeri Marjatta Paatelainen; 15 August 1926; Pieksämäki
Died	16 May 2021 (aged 94); Helsinki
Nationality	Finnish
Alma mater	Helsinki University of Technology
Occupation	Architect
Spouse(s)	Reima Pietilä ; (m. 1963–93; his death)
Children	Annukka Pietilä
Practice	Raili and Reima Pietilä architects (prev. Reima Pietilä and Raili Paatelainen)

Reima Pietilä
Reima Pietilä
Born	25 August 1923; Turku
Died	26 August 1993 (aged 70); Helsinki
Nationality	Finnish
Alma mater	Helsinki University of Technology
Occupation	Architect
Spouse(s)	Raili Pietilä ; (m. 1963–93; his death)
Children	Annukka Pietilä
Practice	Raili and Reima Pietilä architects (prev. Reima Pietilä and Raili Paatelainen)
Buildings	Mäntyniemi Official Residence of the President of Finland, Dipoli Student Union

Frans Reima Ilmari Pietilä (25 August 1923 – 26 August 1993) was a Finnish architect and theorist. He did most of his work together with his wife Raili Pietilä (Raili Inkeri Marjatta née Paatelainen, 15 August 1926 – 16 May 2021^[1]); after 1963 all their works were officially attributed to "Raili and Reima Pietilä". Reima Pietilä was a professor of architecture at the University of Oulu from 1973 to 1979.

Life

Reima Pietilä was born in Turku, Finland. His father, Frans Viktor Pietilä, was a property owner and his mother, Ida Maria Lehtinen was a housewife. His parents had met each other in the US, when his mother was working as a domestic servant. He had an older sister, the artist Tuulikki Pietilä, who was the partner of the author Tove Jansson.

Reima Pietilä attended school in Turku, where he was a school friend of Mauno Koivisto, who would later become the President of Finland. Pietilä graduated in architecture 1953 at the Helsinki University of Technology (TKK). Raili Paatelainen graduated in architecture 1956 also at the Helsinki University of Technology. In 1949–1951 she worked for architect and town planner Olli Kivinen and 1959–1960 for architect Olaf Küttner. Reima and Raili commenced their collaboration in 1960 creating the office Reima Pietilä and Raili Paatelainen, renamed in 1975 to Raili and Reima Pietilä architects. Reima Pietilä and Raili Paatelainen were married in 1963. Their daughter and only child Annukka Pietilä (born 1963), is also a qualified architect.

Career

Pietilä's career took off after winning the architectural competition for the Finnish Pavilion at the Brussels World Fair of 1958. This was followed by two other significant competition victories, the Kaleva Church in Tampere (1966) and the Dipoli Student Union building for Helsinki University of Technology (1966).

The life and career of Reima Pietilä has been well charted in the writings of British architectural historian-critics

modernist architecture concerned with rationalism and economy. The whole question is problematic, however, because Finland's most famous architect, Alvar Aalto, was also seen as someone who broke the mold of pure modernism, someone who indeed talked about extending the notion of rationalism. Pietilä saw his work as organic architecture, but also very much as modern. Pietilä intellectualised his position, and was well-read in philosophy and modern literature. He was very much concerned with the issue of a phenomenology of place, epitomised by the Student Union building Dipoli (1961–1966) on the Otaniemi campus of Helsinki University of Technology. This concern for place also extended to his concerns about national identity and Finnishness, even exploring the Finnish language to generate architectural form. The same then applied also for his works abroad, in Kuwait and Delhi. Many of Reima Pietilä's theoretical writings were published in the journal Le Carré Bleu, a journal he jointly founded in Helsinki in 1958, together with fellow Finnish architects Aulis Blomstedt and Keijo Petäjä, Finnish architecture historian Kyösti Ålander, and French architect André Schimmerling, whom together formed the CIAM Helsinki group, the Finnish group associated with CIAM (Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne

).

A major exhibition of the work of Reima and Raili Pietilä was held in 2008 at the Museum of Finnish Architecture in Helsinki, titled Raili and Reima Pietilä. Challenging Modern Architecture.

Raili and Reimä Pietilä designed a summer cottage for Reima's sister, the artist

Moomin

characters.

Life and works

Significant buildings

1956–1958 Finnish pavilion at the Brussels World's Fair
1959–1966 The Kaleva Church in Tampere
1961–1966 Dipoli student assembly building in Otaniemi, Espoo
1962–1982 Suvikumpu residential area in Tapiola Espoo^[3]
1963–1985 Finnish Embassy in New Delhi India
1973–1975 The sauna at Hvitträsk in Kirkkonummi^[4]
1973–1982 Sief Palace Area Buildings in Kuwait City, Kuwait^[5]
1978–1986 Metso, Tampere Central Library^[6]
1979–1982 Lieksa Church in Lieksa northern Karelia^[7]
1979–1989 Shopping center and community center in Hervanta, Tampere
1984–1993 Mäntyniemi, Official Residence of the President of Finland in Helsinki

Significant theoretical texts by Reima Pietilä

"The morphology of expressive space", Le Carré Bleu, 1958
"Hobby Dogs", Finnish Architectural Review, 1967
"Zone", Finnish Architectural Review, 1968
"Space Garden", 1971
"Eight ways to break free from rabbit-hutch architecture", Finnish Architectural Review, 1979
"A Gestalt building", A+U, Tokyo, 1983
"Architecture after Zero", 1984