Olavi Koponen is a participant of the Nordic Wood festival held at the Moscow Central House of Architects, organized by the ARCHIWOOD project with the support of the Union of Moscow Architects (CMA), Project Baltia magazine, as well as with the partnership of HONKA, the Embassy of the Kingdom of Norway in Russia, the Velsky Les company and the "Rules of Communication" agency.
Archi.ru: Before getting an architectural education, you studied political science in the USSR. Why did you decide to study in Moscow? Were you a communist?
Olavi Koponen: Yes, I was - when I was young. I got carried away with this back in the years 14-15, in the 1960s, when the left movement, primarily the student movement, intensified throughout Europe. In Finland, in the 1970s, it merged with the existing parties, some of the participants went to the Social Democrats, and the most radical joined the Communist Party. I stayed in Moscow from 1979 to 1981, when I studied at the Institute of Social Sciences under the Central Committee of the CPSU - it was a special party school for communists from Western countries.
Already then you wanted to become an architect?
No, at first I was even going to stay in the USSR a little longer, to graduate from the Academy of Social Sciences under the Central Committee of the CPSU, but then I decided to return to Finland and enter an architectural university. I was already painting and drawing, at the party school I painted a large portrait of Otto Kuusinen [a major Finnish and Soviet politician, member of the international communist movement - approx. Archi.ru], and also depicted Soviet leaders playing punk-rock - a picture for a songbook that was released at school. Then someone from the outside saw it, and the entire circulation was confiscated.
Was there really such a liberal atmosphere in the party school?
Yes, for example, our philosophy teacher, who had a doctoral dissertation on the cult of personality and who went to the Orthodox Church, joked: “Since the 1960s, they no longer execute dissidents, they have two options for where to put them - the Siberian branch of the Academy of Sciences and the party school”. Another philosophy teacher, who also worked at the KGB school, was also very radical. These were people who had a good idea of the real state of affairs in the country, they did not need to lie. For example, before returning to Finland, I had a long conversation with our professor of economics. He was already a middle-aged man, a leading employee of the CMEA Institute, adviser A. N. Kosygin [Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers in 1964-80 - approx. Archi.ru], he told me that the Soviet Union and all the socialist countries will face big changes in a few years, the revolution will be bigger than in 1917, and then all of them will end. He and people like him knew real statistics and understood that everything was falling apart.
Let's now turn to architecture. In Finland you built small houses from wood, and in France - large public buildings, schools, sports complexes. What is the reason for this difference between your practice in the two countries?
Now I work almost exclusively in France, and the move there was a coincidence. The large Paris exhibition on sustainable architecture Living Sustainably, which included my “ideal” new type of housing project for the metropolitan suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt, was shown in Grenoble in spring 2010, and after that I received an offer of cooperation from Véronique Klimine, founder of R2K Architectes. She really liked my project, and since she knew that I had not been involved in public buildings before, she invited me to work on such projects in partnership with her workshop. And in October 2010 I moved to Grenoble for good. It is an alpine region with many forests. R2K Architectes is now 16 years old and constantly building from wood, and they were among the first architects to promote this material in public projects.
Probably, the difference between villas - "objects in the landscape" and large, almost utilitarian structures was very large …
Yes, this is a completely different phenomenon. They are at least 10 times larger than my usual scale. Secondly, with large projects it is impossible to control the whole process, and before that I almost always worked alone. At the beginning of my collaboration with R2K Architecte, I was almost in despair: you leave a project to someone in the morning, and in the afternoon you cannot recognize it. Now, however, it has become easier. In addition, a tighter schedule must be followed.
Finland also has public buildings made of wood. But you only did projects of private houses - was that your choice?
No, I just didn't have the opportunity to do something else. I tried to turn the tide, but nothing came of it. I gained authority, I received awards, I received this honorary position of "Artist Professor", but I could not get real projects.
What is the current situation in French timber construction?
In recent years, many state-owned wooden objects have been built in France - at the initiative of the authorities. The country has high unemployment, so in forested areas - in the mountains, as well as in Brittany and Normandy - politicians are thus supporting the local logging industry. In November 2012, we implemented a project of a group of 5 schools in Limey-Brevanne near Paris, and it was the local mayor who, by the way, had communist views wanted to build these schools out of wood. There are special government subsidies for timber structures because they are about 20% more expensive than concrete ones. Roads are large, multi-storey structures, since it is more difficult to achieve the required acoustic and other standards in wood.
Are traditional methods of wooden architecture still alive there?
In France, wood construction is closely related to the German tradition. For example, the specialist wood engineers who always work with us have mostly studied in Switzerland. This is expressed in the preference for certain types of cuttings, etc., this is very different from the Scandinavian tradition. At the same time, Swedish and Finnish woodworking companies - Stora Enso, UPM, Metsä - are successfully operating in France.
Such buildings can rather be called “wooden hi-tech”, but did you build villas in Finland according to national traditions?
In fact, there is no hi-tech: there are technological materials such as CLT (glued wood with a cross-layer arrangement) and gluelam beams, but everything else in wood architecture is low-tech. I am fortunate that I have built all my villas with the same engineer, a very practical person who does not like complicated techniques. I told him right away that I needed the simplest structure so that I could build a house on my own. Before the university I worked as a carpenter, and I built the first houses with my own hands. And for a long time I myself was my main customer, but today I can say that I nevertheless built most of the villas for others.
At the Nordic Wood Roundtable, architecture critic Lara Kopylova raised the issue of the level of skill required to build a wooden house. Since you are very familiar with the practical side of things, what can you say on this topic?
The difference in craftsmanship is also noticeable when working with concrete, for example, between France and Germany, it is huge. The Germans achieve great precision, but in France it is just a disaster. In Finland, when working with concrete, no tolerances are made, 5 cm maximum. But when working with wood, you must be perfectly prepared, otherwise nothing will come of it. In addition, it is necessary to organize the construction site very well, because all wooden materials must be reliably protected from moisture, etc.otherwise they will have to be thrown away. And this is one of the reasons for the reluctance of construction companies to work with wood, because they are not used to such accuracy. But in France, in recent years, the largest companies have been taking over the small woodworkers to take their know-how. After all, otherwise they will not survive: throughout the European Union, eco-standards are becoming more stringent, the carbon footprint of the construction of the facility is calculated, and at the same time they are given benefits for the tree. Therefore, if you want to build from concrete - “buy” this right using wood.
Which wood architects have influenced your art?
When I was studying, I was interested in the works of the Australian architect Glen Mercat, I will also call Sverre Fehn, although both of them did not build much of wood. In addition, I constantly looked through the catalogs of the Treprisen Norwegian Wood Architecture Award. And for me, the choice of wood as a material was a matter of course: I knew carpentry and was confident that I could design and build a house myself, from scratch.
Olavi Koponen was born in Tuusniemi in 1951, studied political science in Moscow (1979–81), graduated from Tampere Technical University (1983–1993). Since 1986 he has been working as an architect. Represented Finland at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2004 and 2006 and received the Finnish Wood Award (national wood construction award) in 2007. Since 2010 he has been working in France as part of R2K Architectes.
