Esa Laaksonen to Discuss 'Architectural Ataraxis: Finnish Examples' on Oct. 31

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The Chapel of St. Lawrence, designed by Avanto Architects. (Image courtesy of Esa Laaksonen)

Architect Esa Laaksonen will discuss silent spaces in a lecture titled “Architectural Ataraxis: Finnish Examples” at 5:30 p.m. Mon., Oct. 31, at Hembree Auditorium (Agricultural, Food, and Life Sciences Building, Room 107E) on the University of Arkansas campus. He is director of the Alvar Aalto Academy and a principal architect at Friman Laaksonen Architects, both in Helsinki, Finland.

At the academy, he organizes architecture symposiums, design seminars and meetings. He also acts as the editor of the Aalto architecture monograph series and as the editor-in-chief of ptah, an English language journal on architecture, design and art.

Laaksonen has been editor-in-chief of Arkkitehti, the Finnish architectural review, and the head of the exhibition office at the Museum of Finnish Architecture. He has also been actively teaching architecture at the University of Technology in Helsinki since 1982. In 1998, he was the Ruth and Norman Moore Visiting Professor of Architecture at Washington University in St. Louis. He was also been an invited guest professor of architecture at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane and at the University of Adelaide, both in Australia.

Laaksonen has designed several buildings, including the Swimming Hall in Siilinjärvi, and the Border Station at Niirala. He was also responsible for the design of the Helsinki University Siltavuorenpenger Campus area projects. He has received about 30 prizes (six of them first prizes) in national and international competitions for architecture. He has given lectures at architectural conferences and worked as a visiting critic at universities in Europe and the United States. He is the editor of several books on architecture. He has also served on the jury for architecture and art competitions in Finland and abroad.

This is the Mort Karp Memorial Lecture, sponsored by Polk Stanley Wilcox Architects, in the Fay Jones School of Architecture 2011-12 lecture series.

Admission is free, with limited seating. For more information, contact 479-575-4704 or architecture.uark.edu.