Raili and Reima Pietilä

During the 1960s the Finnish architects Raili (born 1926) and Reima (1923-1993) Pietilä gained international attention for their highly original architecture. Which represented a new organic approach to modern architecture, in a period that was otherwise dominated by standardised modular architecture.

Their poetic and expressive architecture focused very much on the relation to the actual site and specific surroundings, together with an inherent appreciation of a sensory and phenomenological experience of architecture.
Reima Pietilä as an articulate architectural theorist and inspirational teacher, saw great potential in the use of languageas an instrument for understanding architectural problems.
Reima Pietilä died in 1993. Raili Pietilä and their daughter, the architect Annukka Pietilä, donated the office’s archive of circa 30,000 drawings and other material to the Museum of Finnish Architecture in 2002.