Helsinki-based architect Juha Leiviskä is renowned for the churches he designed across Finland from 1970 to the 1990s. Yet it is here, working on the humble branch library for the Vallila neighbourhood in Helsinki, that he first succeeded to fully realize his ideas of the architectural form.
Leiviskä once said that architecture is closer to music than to the visual arts: “To qualify as architecture, buildings, together with their internal spaces and their details, must be an organic part of the environment, of its grand drama, of its movement and of its spatial sequences.”
Such attention to spacial sequencing is evident in the Vallila library, with its lofty entrance “plaza” welcoming readers through a combination of generous light and cosy furniture before leading them to radiating library spaces.