Jan Söderlund designed by Sanomatalo is dead

Architect Jan Söderlund has died at the age of 87. He died on Monday after a long illness. Knowledge of death was confirmed to HS from his immediate circle.

Söderlund made a life -long career in architecture. He spent his childhood and attended his school in the Pargas, in a closed Swedish area. When he started studying architecture at the University of Technology in the late 1950s, he hardly knew Finnish, but he had to learn. There was no Swedish -language teaching.

“But language is not important in architecture, but pictures. I sometimes got translation help from other students when told to draw a ball, cone or cube,” Söderlund said in his 80th anniversary interview in HS in late 2017.

Söderlund worked for a moment Alvar Aalto In the office, when plans were made to become a new center in Helsinki. He later said he was pleased that Aalto’s proposal did not materialize. Otherwise, the trees in Hesperia Park would have been felled now and a motorway would be overwhelmed over the bird singing.

After a short Aalto peeping, Söderlund went to concrete biblism’s leading name Aarno Rose Year to the office and stayed there longer.

One’s own career It started when in 1963 he won the competition from the Kemi Cultural Center. In 1967 Söderlund and Erkki Valovirta (1942-2015) Together won the design of the Turku Student Village and established a joint office. The duo also designed the Yyter Spa Hotel, completed in the mid-1970s.

After that, Söderlund became increasingly excited about home planning. In the late 1970s, he was able to design a part of the test building housing he had designed for the West Pasila Broadcasting side. 1982-83 was born with architect Sebastian Savander, an exceptional semi-detached house in Jollasa in eastern Helsinki.

The city of Helsinki protected the 40-year-old residential block in 2023.

In the 1990s Söderlund found his partner Antti-Matti Siikalawith whom a joint office SARC was established. They were designed to plan a Sanomatalo, which has remained a central landmark in downtown Helsinki since its completion.

However, perhaps the idea for his most important building, the architect got a bike ride in Laajasalo in the 1980s. At that time, Söderlund hit a rock with a view over the bay of the sea until the center. He began to find out who owned the plot and finally bought it from a suspicious widow.

On that rock, he drew a detached house for his family.