Nordicum - Real Estate Annual Finland 2011 | Page 14

Call of the Wild
Daniel Libeskind discusses past, present and
future architecture in Finland
Superstar architect Daniel Libeskind is crazy about Finland – and
doesn’t care who knows it.
“I admire Finland very deeply; it has such incredible culture to go
with the remarkable social aspect. In many regards, Finland is the model
for the rest of the world.”

ccording to Libeskind, the story of
Finland is an inspiring one – a small,
backwoods country that embraces industrialisation and education, eventually hits
pay dirt with Nokia and charges onto the
new millennium among the leading information societies in the world.
“Finland has gone through a great
transformation to get where it is today.”
The master architect and Finland go
back a long time, too. Libeskind first visited the country in 1970 and has been coming back ever since.
“I’ve lost count, how many times I’ve
been to Finland,” he laughs. He observes
that to get to the core of any nation, you have

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to visit again and again. “I’ve been fortunate
enough to make many good friends in Finland and this has helped me to get into the
depths of the country.”

Saarinen’s Shadow
It seems that Libeskind has not been able
to get away from Finland even when he is
back home in the USA. Case in point: he
served as Dean of the Faculty of Architecture of the legendary Cranbrook Academy
of Art for almost two decades (1978–1995)
and the academy buildings were, of course,
designed by Finnish master Eliel Saarinen.
Saarinen also ran the school for a time.