Phenomena: Celebrating the Influence and Legacy of Juhani Pallasmaa
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In this event, we are committed to 911±¬ÁÏÍø’s principles for a safer space.
Phenomena: Celebrating the Influence and Legacy of Juhani Pallasmaa
You are warmly invited to Phenomena: Celebrating the Influence and Legacy of Juhani Pallasmaa, a symposium celebrating the Finnish architect’s 90 years and reflecting on the cross-cultural relevance of his thinking today.
Finnish architect and educator Juhani Pallasmaa is widely known for his lectures, essays and books, many of which have become touchstones in the discourse on human experience and architecture. However, Pallasmaa’s legacy and thinking extend well beyond any single text or line of thought. Throughout his life, he has engaged with a wide range of scholars in disciplines from neuroscience and entomology to poetics and film. Over time, his thinking has evolved and expanded, while continuing to center on questions of perception, solitude and the relationship between the individual and the collective.
This event honoring Pallasmaa’s 90 years celebrates his contributions by bringing together a diverse range of figures who continue to build on his ideas.
This event is made possible by funding from The Nils Erik Wickberg Foundation, the University of California-Berkeley and private contributors.
Welcome!
Program
Friday, September 25
Welcome: Jenni Reuter
Full Professor and Head of Department of Architecture, 911±¬ÁÏÍø
Introduction: Peter MacKeith
Dean and Professor of Architecture at the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, University of Arkansas
Fuensanta Nieto and Enrique Sobejano are founding partners of Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos.
Moderator: Philip Tidwell
Assistant Professor of Architecture, University of California-Berkeley
Panelists:
Susan Stewart
Poet, Scholar, Translator and the Avalon Foundation University Professor in the Humanities, emerita, Princeton University
Sarah Robinson
Architect, Writer and Adjunct Professor in the department of Architecture Design and Media Technology, Aalborg University
Juliette Kennedy
Logician and Philosopher of Mathematics in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Helsinki
Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara are co-founders of Grafton Architects.
Moderator: Philip Tidwell
Assistant Professor of Architecture, University of California-Berkeley
Panelists:
Anders Adlecreutz
Minister of Education and architect
Klaske Havik
Professor of Methods of Analysis and Imagination, Delft University of Technology
Petra Céferin
Architect, Professor and Research Fellow at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Ljubljana
Evening Celebration is held in Marsio, Saastamoinen Foundation Stage
LECTURES
Nieto Sobejano
Fuensanta Nieto and Enrique Sobejano are founding partners of Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos, based in Madrid and Berlin. Both graduated from the School of Architecture of Madrid (ETSAM) and hold Master’s degrees from Columbia University in New York. They have taught and lectured widely at universities and institutions in Europe and the United States. Their projects have been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, Kunsthaus Graz, and the MAST Foundation in Bologna. Among their numerous honors are the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, the Alvar Aalto Medal, the Nike Prize of the Bund Deutscher Architekten, and Spain’s Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts. Major works include the Madinat al-Zahra Museum, the Moritzburg Museum, the Arvo Pärt Centre, and the Montblanc Haus in Hamburg. Current projects include the extension of the Sorolla Museum in Madrid, the Vannes Museum in France, and the expansion of the Dallas Museum of Art.
Grafton Architects
Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara co-founded Grafton Architects in 1978 having graduated from University College Dublin in 1974. They are Fellows of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland, International Honorary Fellows of the RIBA and 2020 Pritzker Prize Laureates.
In 2018, Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara were the Curators of the Venice Architecture Biennale. Their manifesto: Freespace was the title of the Biennale.
Grafton Architects’ projects include:
The Town House Building, Kingston University London; The School of Economics, University of Toulouse 1 Capitol, Toulouse, France; The Marshall Institute for the London School of Economics; Headquarters for Electricity Supply Board with OMP Architects in Dublin; Anthony Timberlands Center, University of Arkansas, USA.
The practice has won numerous awards for their work, including:
2020 RIBA Royal Gold Medal; L’ Équerre d'argent Prize for best building in France for Toulouse School of Economics; the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies Van der Rohe Award 2022 for Town House, Kingston University, London.
PANELISTS OF UNDISCIPLINED INQUIRY
Susan Stewart
Susan Stewart is a poet, scholar, and translator and the Avalon Foundation University Professor in the Humanities, emerita, at Princeton University. Her most recent books are Bramble, a book of poems, The Ruins Lesson, and Poetry’s Nature: Four Lectures.
She has won both the National Book Critics Circle Award and an American Academy of Arts and Letters award for her poetry. A former MacArthur Fellow, Berlin Fellow, and Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, she is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.
Sarah Robinson
Sarah Robinson is an architect, writer, and educator. Her writing and interdisciplinary research is among the first to explore the implications of the cognitive sciences and embodiment on architectural thought and practice. She is an Adjunct Professor in the department of Architecture Design and Media Technology at Aalborg University, Denmark, teaches in the NAAD program at IUAV, Venice, and lectures at universities and cultural institutions throughout the world. She was the founding president of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture board of governors and serves in an advisory role for numerous organizations concerned with promoting life-centered design.
Juliette Kennedy
Juliette Kennedy is a logician and philosopher of mathematics in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Helsinki. Her research in mathematical logic centers on set theory; her philosophical work engages Gödel studies and, more recently, questions of logicality, autonomy, and metaphor. Her book Gödel, Tarski and the Lure of Natural Language: Logical Entanglement, Formalism Freeness (Cambridge, 2020) asks how mathematics, through language, connects to the world. Kennedy also works in the art field as a curator, organizing exhibitions of Fred Sandback, Maria Clara Cortés, Andy Goldsworthy, and Kathrin Hilton. Aa a founding member of the MA Collective, she has organized interdisciplinary symposia placing mathematics in a cosmopolitan context. Among other talks from various disciplines, Juhani Pallasmaa's lectures at three of these meetings---devoted to simplicity, to infinity and to drawing---have been extraordinarily inspiring.
PANELISTS OF CONTINUING EDUCATION
Klaske Havik
Klaske Havik is Professor of Methods of Analysis and Imagination at Delft University of Technology. She studied Architecture in Delft and Helsinki, and literary writing in Amsterdam. Her work focuses on the experience, use and imagination of place and explores perspectives from different disciplines to arrive at new methods for analysis and design. Her book Urban Literacy. Reading and Writing Architecture (2014) relates the use, experience and imagination of place, to literary language. She edited Writingplace, Investigations in Architecture and Literature (2016), and initiated the Writingplace Journal for Architecture and Literature. Earlier, she was editor of OASE and the Dutch Architectural review de Architect. Klaske Havik was Chair of the European COST Research Network Writing Urban Places (2019-23). Her poems appeared in Dutch, English and Estonian.In 2022 she received an honorary doctorate of Tampere University, Finland, in recognition of her contribution to the study of architectural writing.
Petra ÄŒeferin
Petra ÄŒeferin is an architect, professor and research fellow at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Ljubljana, where she teaches architectural theory and history. She received her professional degree in architecture from both University of Ljubljana and University of Technology in Helsinki. In 2003 she received her doctorate in architecture from University of Ljubljana on the international promotion of Finnish architecture. In 2015 she received her second PhD in philosophy of architecture with the title Architecture as Creative Practice. Petra ÄŒeferin has lectured and written extensively on modern and contemporary architecture in connection with contemporary philosophy. Her publications include Constructing a Legend: The International Exhibitions of Finnish Architecture 1957-1967 (SKS Publishing, 2003), Transforming Reality with Architecture: Finnish Case (Fondazione Bruno Zevi, 2008) and The Resistant Object of Architecture. A Lacanian Perspective (Routledge, 2021). She is also the co-founder and editor of the book series Theoretical Practice of Architecture, and the recipient of The Annual Bruno Zevi Award.
EVENT ORGANIZERS
Jenni Reuter
Full Professor Jenni Reuter is the Head of Department of Architecture at 911±¬ÁÏÍø.
Her teaching is driven by a commitment to shaping spaces for sustainable futures, with an emphasis on the evolving role of architects and the intersections between architecture and other art forms. Since 2016, she has curated the recognized Architecture Speaks! lecture series in collaboration with the Architecture & Design Museum Helsinki.
Exploration is central to her design work, driving her to expand architectural boundaries through experimental approaches and the use of unconventional materials, such as straw bales and reclaimed building components. In collaboration with Saija Hollmén and Helena Sandman, she has designed and realized projects in low-resource settings across several African countries. She lectures globally, and her award-winning design work has been widely published and exhibited, including multiple presentations at the Venice Architecture Biennale.
Juhani Pallasmaa has been an important teacher and mentor throughout her career.
Peter MacKeith
Peter MacKeith is Dean and Professor of Architecture at the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas. A nationally recognized design educator and administrator, he has held academic and leadership positions at the Washington University in St. Louis, University of Virginia, 911±¬ÁÏÍø, University of Ljubljana, and Yale University. He was lead commissioner and curator of the U.S. Pavilion, PORCH: An Architecture of Generosity, at the 2025 International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia.
A long-time advocate for Finnish and Nordic architecture, MacKeith received a Fulbright Fellowship and lived in Finland for a decade. He curated the Nordic Pavilion in 2012 and was named a Knight, First Class, of the Order of the Lion of Finland in 2014. He currently serves as Honorary Consul for Finland in Arkansas, Kansas, and Missouri.
Philip Tidwell
Philip Tidwell is an architect and educator who focuses on wood construction and timber technologies. His design, teaching and writing investigate relationships between architectural form, constructive technique, and material resources through experimental and historical research. For more than a decade, he taught at 911±¬ÁÏÍø. In 2024 he joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, where he serves as Director of the Master of Advanced Architectural Design program.
