Architect Anssi Lassilan the name is often associated with both the tree and the churches, but neither is the whole truth. Although four churches and one chapel have been built according to his plans, his output includes housing design, public buildings, kindergartens, regional planning, renovation construction and small houses.

The church is one of the architects’ dreams. Nowadays, they are not built much, rather they are demolished. Lassila is probably the only architect of his generation who has managed to design more than one.

Professor Style Sheet in the 1990s came up with the idea of ​​a student competition about Kärsämäki church. The purpose was to use traditional materials and working methods. Anssi Lassila won the competition and the shingle church became his breakthrough work, the construction stages of which were followed closely by the public.

“It was a happy phase. Everything was done by hand and there was no schedule pressure,” Lassila recalls.

He planned at the same time Klaukkala church. “That’s when the realities of construction came into play,” he says.

The facade of the Klaukkala church is copper, and other later churches do not have wooden facades either. In Kuokkala’s church and Suvela’s chapel, wood dominates the interiors, but in Tikkurila’s church, raw concrete. But according to Lassila, the pursuit of ecologically sustainable and innovative solutions is one guiding principle in his work.

The stamp of a wooden architect has been promoted by Puukuokka, a residential quarter in Jyväskylä, whose first completed 8-story house Lassila received the Finlandia Award for Architecture in 2015. The project also received other awards.

In the apartment building project, an innovative effort to find prefabricated and modular solutions for the use of solid wood was essential. The office continues this work. The purpose would also be to promote the use of locally available materials in construction, but when Puukuokka was still being built, we had to rely partly on the import of timber from Europe.

What is the reason that the wooden materials for the construction have not been obtained from Finland until these days?

“Our wood processing industry is global primary production. It took me a long time before I realized that the home country is a small market for it. Large construction companies also don’t seem to be particularly interested in increasing the use of wood in construction,” Lassila reflects.

If we are going to increase wood construction, the hope is in the emergence of new and smaller manufacturers and their cooperation. Today, clt boards and other wood materials, including elements, can already be obtained from Finland.

“Change is happening slowly, but I think there should also be a discussion about what our felled forests are used for. I think it would make more sense to use them for construction than for cardboard,” Lassila says.

Lassila has had its own office for over 20 years. The Oopeaa architect office has offices in Helsinki and Seinäjoki. In addition, he has a professorship, “fortunately part-time”, at the architecture department of the University of Oulu. Does he have time to travel between Oulu, Seinäjoki and Helsinki?

“I don’t go to Helsinki or Oulu every week. Communication between offices is very successful with the help of current communication tools. I consider the train journey a good working time”, he says.

The name of Architektitoimisto Oopea comes from the words Office of Peripheral Architecture (Finnish for “office of peripheral architecture”). The number of employees varies depending on the work situation, but currently 17 people work at Lassila.

The Helsinki office where we meet is in Töölö along Etelainen Hesperiankatu. Like architectural offices, there are large drawing tables with computers, design furniture, art, green plants and miniature models on the boards of the “show windows”. Even though work is done more and more on computers these days, Lassila says that they use miniature models as a design aid.

Lassila has worked as an architect “during the free market economy of construction” in the 21st century. He seems to be worried about the direction in which construction is going in our country.

“Housing production has gone through big cycles and drifted in a rather narrow direction from an architectural perspective. The projects are getting bigger and bigger. It can be seen as super-efficient block construction all over the country, especially in the capital region. The place for a value discussion would be to consider whether we build for people, what would be the human volume and what determines the efficiency of construction”, Lassila assesses and calls our time “joyless”.

But he still believes that some kind of playfulness would be coming.

“Maybe even the symmetry of classicism is coming back – or maybe the way it was used in the 80s. Could playing with architecture from the 80s become fashionable again?” he ponders.

Two The Tikkurila church, which was completed a year ago, is part of a hybrid block with housing and services in addition to the church. The office in Kotikaupungi is occupied by the block of Seinäjoki station, where, like Tikkurila, functions are combined: station, business premises, family service center and housing.

A completely different scale was represented by the public sauna completed on the island of Lonna in 2017, which attracted a lot of attention after it was completed on an island whose other buildings are from the period of Russian rule. Along with large projects, Lassila has also managed to design a smaller scale, in addition to Lonna’s sauna, the Periskoop tower for the Seinäjoki housing fair.

“Small objects are important because every detail is meaningful in them. And all the solutions are close to people, visible and tangible,” he assesses.