So, I decided to let you take a peek into my sketchbook. These are of course mostly just scribblings that might have information value only to myself. But they may also work as a catalyst to my thoughts and I will extract these thoughts for you to read.

I thought this might tell more about me and my interests than a piece of artwork that shows my nonexcellence in drawing techniques. Besides – it was a fun and interesting journey traveling back all those tracks and seeing where I’ve been.

‘RAKOVALKEA’summer 2008

These are sketches for an expo pavilion for the Shanghai Expo 2010. Although our group’s proposal wasn’t exactly based on these I believe the sketching process opened up some of the approaches we chose.

Expos are almost totally detached of this world which makes it difficult to base your decisions on anything else but intuition. So the starting point for our work was to come up with a strong basic concept.

‘RAKOVALKEA’

I remember how – after a night or two of intense sketching – I felt I had finally solved the puzzle and put together the thoughts I had developed during the first few months of the project.

Looking back now I realize we should’ve been a little less democratic when casting the ideological foundation for the design. Now the result was a compromise of several promising ideas when it should’ve been clearly based on one of them that we would’ve polished to the extreme.

Nevertheless the process was an exciting one and the conversations we had were inspiring. An interesting aspect of group dynamics is always how to balance between individual ambitions and the project as a whole.

‘RAKOVALKEA’

‘RAKOVALKEA’

‘VIISTOS’autumn 2007

‘VIISTOS’

This set of sketches belongs to a project that you can also find from my portfolio. Basically they’re just attempts to give form to the idea I had in my mind.

I had come to the conclusion that the pavilion to celebrate our student guild’s 100th birthday should have two functions: it should be a landmark that forms a warm and friendly image of the guild and it should preferably offer some shelter for the couple of persons who would be working in it during the festive events.

The project started to form from low cost materials that would be easy to process: plywood and wooden beams. There were two things that had major roles in defining the form itself. First, I wanted the supporting pillars to be identical to ease the building process. Second, I wanted to fold the simple wall to give it two different shades.

After these two conditions were set it felt like the game started to play by itself forming the inevitable end result.

‘VIISTOS’

‘RAITA’summer 2007

‘RAITA’

The process shown here is familiar to every architect: up here we call it “floor plan workout”. The outcome of all this twisting and stretching should be a finely tuned and smoothly working architectural body.

This particular workout was done to a competition entry, a small residential building for the Finnish Housing Expo.

A smooth working floor plan is of course a high priority for a residential project and we also wanted to include some future scenarios of how to extend the house when necessary.

The atrium house isn’t a very popular housing typology around here perhaps due to the northern climate conditions that can make the yard shadowy, cold and full of snow during the winter.

Our aim was however to tackle these prejudices and show that it can work if done right. Taking the challenges and turning them to your benefit has always been a way to achieve the extraordinary.

‘RAITA’

RANDOMNESSthoughts I will get back to?

I was writing my B. Sc. thesis and learning about the techniques used in films to create feelings of space. I especially enjoyed Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker and focused my writings around it. Ever since I watched it I’ve had a growing passion towards cinema.

Suddenly I found myself in front of my drawing table sketching. First I thought it was going to be a sequence for a film – a short experiment in time, space, dialogue and music; how they interact with each other.

Next week I sat down facing the same page again and sketched underneath it something that had been developing in my mind. There were spaces interconnected to each other in various ways: on physical level by growing from each other, with sounds and acoustics reminding you of spaces around and inside, perhaps even the Time would twirl around itself and concentrate to form this body.

It was as if my film sequence had turned into an architectural object.

‘RANDOMNESS’

A study of segmented lines gradually turning into curves. Perhaps a concept for a painting?

‘RANDOMNESS’

A sketch for a colony of seaweed farmers producing biological fuel.

So, here we are at the end of my scribblings. Our little journey ends although the best part of any sketchbook only starts here; all those blank pages just waiting the touch of your pen!

‘TO BE CONTINUED’