OOPEAA – Book Launch and Signing at the Venice Biennale

Back again after a couple of lovely days in Venice, which we began with a book launch of OOPEAA’s new monograph in collaboration with the Museum of Finnish Architecture at the Finnish Alvar Aalto Pavillion in Giardini.

The story of OPPEAA – Office for Peripheral Architecture began in a rural field in Finland, where the now-iconic Kärsämäki Shingle Church was built by hand by hundreds of volunteers over more than half a decade. In the year that followed, OOPEAA established itself as one of Finland’s leading architecture firms distinguished by its sensitivity to materials and craftsmanship – first under the name Lassila Hirvilammi Architects and, from 2014, as OOPEAA – Office of Peripheral Architecture.

‘It is essential to the approach of OOPEAA to always see a building as part of the larger context in which it is situated, whether urban or rural, whether embedded in an urban community or surrounded by a landscape of open fields. For them, context is both the physical sense of geographical location, the social community of the people whom the building is designed to serve, and the temporal aspect of its place in the larger historical continuum of life.’

Juulia Kauste, Director of the Museum of Finnish Architecture, Helsinki

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