Finnish Architect Esa Laaksonen To Deliver ‘Architectural Ataraxis’

News release prepared by: Emily Vietti, evietti@k-state.edu, 785-532-1090
Monday, October 24, 2011

Finnish Architect Esa Laaksonen To Deliver ‘Architectural Ataraxis’

MANHATTAN - Esa Laaksonen, director of the Alvar Aalto Academy, will be delivering the lecture “Architectural Ataraxis - Finnish Examples” at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 26, in the Pierce Commons. The lecture is free, and the public is welcome to attend.

Laaksonen is an architect who has acted as the first director of the Alvar Aalto Academy since its inception in 1999. His main responsibilities at the academy are organizing the yearly Alvar Aalto architecture symposiums, design seminars, and meetings.

He has a professional practice in Helsinki with architect Kimmo Friman. Laaksonen is also the editor of the Aalto Architecture Monograph series and as the editor-in-chief of ptah, English language journal on architecture, design, and art.

Laaksonen was the editor-in-chief of the Finnish Architectural Review, Arkkitehti, from 1996 to 1999, the head of the exhibition office at the Museum of Finnish Architecture from 1998 to 1999, and the regional artist of the southern part of Finland from 1994 to 1998. He has been actively teaching architecture at the University of Technology in Helsinki since 1982. In 1998 Laaksonen was the Norman Moore visiting professor of architecture at Washington University in St. Louis, and he worked as an invited guest professor of architecture at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, in 2002 and at the University of Adelaide, Australia, in 2007.

He has designed several buildings, among them the Swimming Hall in Siilinjärvi (winning competition entry, 1992), the Border Station at Niirala (1994) and he has been the architect responsible for the design of the Helsinki University Siltavuorenpenger campus area projects.

Laaksonen has received about 30 prizes in national and international competitions for architecture. He has given several lectures at architectural conferences and worked as a visiting critic in many universities in Europe and the U.S. He is the editor of several books on architecture. He has been an invited juror for several architecture and art competitions in Finland and abroad.