Urbane artistry - Kankaanpaa art school in Finland

Architectural Review, The, June, 1996 by Henry Miles

This Finnish art school is intended to be a regional educational centre and a formative urban element in its little town.

The Kankaanpaa art school is only the second purpose-built college for teaching the visual arts that has ever been made in Finland.(1) It is toward the fringes of the middle of the little west-coast town, a short distance from the new office centre. A new square has been formed to the northwest of the school in an effort to draw together the disparate surroundings: villas, car park and the new offices.

The school addresses the square with some formality, making up its whole south-east side. The big painting and sculpture studios look out over the public space through their inclined double-height windows, and between them is the opening to the central court of the new building, which is approached up a ramp or gentle flight of shallow steps. The gap in the facade is made into a welcoming arch by carrying the roof-line of the brown Cor-Ten steel elevations over it; its scale is reduced by running a bridge that connects the first floor levels under the flying roof.

Once in the court (which is used in summer for open air exhibitions and drama), you are deflected towards the entrance by the mass of the lecture and library block that pokes out semi-attached at an angle into the open space. Here the material is white rendered concrete block, the planes of which are carved into with great precision. The same material and technique is used as book ends on the Cor-Ten elevation to the square, giving it an appropriate urban scale and presence by emphasising the termination of the side wings.

The curve of the entrance canopy leads you into the top-lit foyer. This rises through three stories, going down to the basement (lowest level of the lecture theatre) and up to the first floor gallery. The lecture theatre can now be seen as an almost independent block, connected to the ground and first floor galleries by bridges and emphasised by its elegantly finished poured concrete walls. Most of the other finishes are equally robust (no bad strategy in a college of art): internal partitions are grey fairfaced concrete block, and ceilings are black grids of steel. (The corridors, foyer and hall spaces are all intended to act as exhibition as well as circulation areas, so presumably the rather grim effect seen when the building opened will soon be ameliorated by the work of the students.)

Gallery balustrades are made of semi-industrial mesh panels, similar to the ones used in the ceilings, with round beech handrails. Panels veneered in warm wood are used to contrast with the general grey of the structure and partitions, for instance in the curved wardrobe screen which shields the lavatory doors on the ground floor gallery. The library and the conference room, which occupy the upper level of the lecture theatre block, are both made almost cosy with built-in furniture that lines the walls. The library in particular, lit by a pyramidal roof light, is a generous and warm room with a long gently curving settle built into the bookshelves along most of one of its long walls. The lecture theatre takes its atmosphere from the contrast between concrete walls and black grid ceiling, and the warm wood of the wall panelling and the curved sound reflective panels that hover under the grid. The big studios are well-lit spaces, simply and directly organised, with structure and partitions painted white.

Because the building was so unusual, there was a budget for special interior fittings. The architects were able to design special lamps for the circulation and hall areas with discs of sandblasted glass on exuberantly slender steel brackets. Another special design was the stackable chair, which is used in different configurations with and without arms, upholstered or plain throughout the building. The wooden parts of the chairs are made of waxed beech and the steel elements are finished with metallic paint.

Like the building as a whole, the furniture is direct and workmanlike, but saved from utilitarian coarseness by design finesse and careful choice of materials. Art schools more than most buildings reflect their occupants and the rather severe impression projected by these photographs will be much changed as the building begins to act as a strong but flexible armature for the life and work of staff and students.

1 There are in fact 10 art schools in Finland serving a population of 5.2 million. The only previous specially built art school is the late nineteenth-century Ateneum in Helsinki. The school has existed in Kankaanpaa for some decades and needed a new building.