A design competition for Viinikka Church in Tampere was held in 1927 and won by an entry by the architect Yrjö Waskinen. A total of 36 proposals were entered for the competition. The church was built in the middle of a low-lying area of private houses, on a triangular site. In Viinikka Church Waskinen combined, for the first time in Finland, the vicarage, parish hall and church in a single building complex. In the central European manner, a single-nave hall church is combined with a monastery-like wing that followed the slanting site. The ground-plan of the building, with its corner tower, could be characterised as Jugend in style, while the exterior represents pure classicism. The intimate inner courtyard recalls the dimensionally slender alleyways of the small towns of the Mediterranean. The belfry, which narrows upwards into a slender spire, is one of many imitations of the tower of Ragnar Östberg’s Stockholm city hall. The interior of the church, which is almost entirely black and white in colour, with its stone mosaic floor, is restrainedly atmospheric. Viinikka Church is one of the most impressive examples of 1920s classicism in Finland, and undoubtedly Waskinen’s masterwork. Later he took a job as an official architect in the employ of the National Board of Building, and never again attained the sensitivity of his youth.

Text: Juhana Lahti / 20th Century Architecture, MFA