Brutalism in Finland

Finland's postwar architecture was dominated by Alvar Aalto, whose red-brick and concrete civic work, including the Säynätsalo Town Hall (1952), set a humane tone that kept pure brutalism rare. Concrete found its most expressive Finnish outlet in churches and university buildings of the 1960s. Reima Pietilä and Raili Pietilä designed the Dipoli Conference Centre (1966) at Otaniemi as a cave-like student building of rock and shuttered concrete, and their Kaleva Church (1966) in Tampere rises as a cluster of curved concrete planes. Aarno Ruusuvuori represented the opposite, rigorously minimal line, with severe concrete churches such as Huutoniemi Church (1964) that remain touchstones of Finnish constructivist restraint.