To the Finns, architecture has always presented a tantalizing source of pleasure and fascination. Perhaps due to the monotony of Finland’s topography—relentlessly flat with only needle-like conifers offering vertical relief—a sense of bold colour, form and texture comes intuitively to them. A walk through Helsinki’s wide avenues and spanking clean streets offers a sampling of the Finnish masters’ handiwork.
Helsinki is one of the youngest among the capitals of Europe. Its beginnings can be traced back to 1550. Swedish King Gustav Vasa envisaged the city situated on the River Vantaa as a rival to some of the prosperous commercial centres of the Hansa, the imposing German trade organization. King Gustav’s dream never became a reality in spite of the residents and merchants, experts in their fields, who were transplanted from the Low Countries. Too far from the normal sea routes and trading posts, this little post-medieval town was soon abandoned, and a new one started on the sea border at Kruununhaka.
For centuries, bad luck befell Helsinki: fires, wars, famine, and disease spread hardship and death. Relentlessly, and despite of being in the crossfire between Sweden and Russia, Helsinki survived. In the early 1740s, the city erected its first fortification, Suomenlinna, built on five connecting islands. From the fort’s shipyards, the new Finnish navy emerged, and the navy’s high-ranking officers eventually comprised the city’s first elite.
In the wooden shanty town, they built highly sophisticated private and government edifices. Confidence began to breed trade and affluence, so that by the beginning of the nineteenth century Helsinki was a respectable and attractive, if provincial city. In 1812 Tsar Alexander I, under whose reign Finland had been won as a result of the 1808-09 war with Sweden, chose Helsinki as the government seat of his Grand Duchy.
Oddly enough, what is now considered the shining example of architecture in Finland was not only instigated by a foreign ruler, but its master architect, Carl Ludwig Engel, was also a foreigner, born in Germany. Happily, the city plan was drawn by a native Finn, though his name—Johan Albrecht Ehrenström—belies his Finnish background. In any case, even if the origin of the structures was alien, the buildings were soon endowed with the Finnish spirit as the nationalist movement breathed its life through the government building surrounding Senaatintori, the Senate Square.
The transformation of Helsinki started with the recreation of its public buildings in a grand scale to match the city’s new importance. Taking his model form the neoclassic structures of St. Petersburg (Leningrad), Engel produced a number of supremely elegant buildings: the Senate Building (1822), the University (1832), the University Library (1844) and the Great Cathedral (1850-52), all keeping vigil over the immense Senate Square.
Cohesive in their neoclassic style, the Senate Square buildings are characterized by tall, slim columns and colonnades, pediments and capitals in their Corinthian, Ionic and Byzantine forms. The colour scheme is unified, as well—white with yellow— a signature of this particular style greatly influenced by the European Empire Period. The cathedral is particularly striking: aside from its imposing location atop numerous steps, the edifice has an oversized central copper-clad cupola, now green with oxidation, surrounded by four smaller domes, one on each corner of the building. The interior is quietly elegant and surprisingly subdued, particularly in comparison with the great European cathedrals.
As the city grew, other stylistic influences arrived from Central Europe, the most notable being the Empire and the German Jugend (Art Nouveau) styles. The most celebrated creation in the Jugend idiom is the National Theatre adjacent to Eliel Saarinen’s Railway Station. An imposing statue of Aleksis Kivi, the Finnish national poet, dominates the foreground of the Theatre. Empire style reigns supreme in the Tallberg Company’s highly ornate building on Aleksanterinkatu.
To speak of the architectural treasures of Helsinki and not mention Alvar Aalto would be unthinkable. Aalto, who has been dubbed one of the twentieth century’s foremost architects and designers, had contributed greatly both in Finland and in many industrialized nations across the world. In Helsinki, his most important work is the Finlandia House, a cultural centre, situated on a lake in the heart of the city. In 1935 he founded Artek, a firm that continues to produce innovative furnishings made of laminated wood. Later Aalto was invited to join the faculty of the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he left a landmark with Baker House, a striking serpentine-plan dormitory.
Eliel Saarinen and his son Eero are internationally recognized as well, having worked both in Europe and in the United States. Eliel Saarinen contributed greatly to the development of the skyscraper, while Eero Saarinen’s Gateway Arch in St. Louis, the TWA Terminal at the John F. Kennedy Airport and the CBS Building in New York, have immortalized this great Finnish architect.
With integrity and fidelity to high art and good taste, the architecture of this Northern nation, as exemplified in Helsinki, continues to provide visual enjoyment and cultural edification to all who have the good fortune of spending time in this “White City of the North.”
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This page was created on March 1, 1998
Most recent revision: March 3, 2007