Lars Sonck
Lars Eliel Sonck (born August 10, 1870 in Kälviä , † March 14, 1956 in Helsinki ) was the most important architect of national romanticism and early modernism in Finland .
Life
Lars Eliel Sonck was born on August 10, 1870 in Kälviä, western Finland. In 1878 his father became a pastor in Finström parish on Åland , where the family then moved and what Lars Eliel saw as his real home from then on. Like his older siblings, he first attended school in Turku . At the age of ten he switched to a humanistic , secondary school, but in addition to bad grades, the young pupil Sonck above all was very homesick for his rural home. In five school years he passed only three exams, which is why he had to repeat the class a few times. Eventually he switched to a modern Swedish-language school, also in Turku, where learning was much easier for him, so that he could graduate at the age of 18. After graduating, Sonck enrolled at the Helsinki Polytechnic Institute .
In the summer of 1892, while still a student, he took part in an excursion by the Finnish Society for Ancient Monuments , which took him to the Finnish regions of Uusimaa , Satakunta and Häme . On this excursion Sonck studied and drew 31 churches and a large number of other buildings and ornamentation. Sonck graduated from the institute in architecture in 1894 - as the best in his class. From then on, Sonck Helsinki was the place of work, in an office on the first floor of the private bank building. Sonck loved to spend the summer in his Lasses villa in Finström, his home.
Lars Sonck's career spans 50 years of Finnish architectural history. His first works date from the time of the last significant buildings by Höjer , the master of the Nordic neo-Renaissance . Sonck's last works were completed when functionalism was already making its way into Finnish architecture. Over the years, Sonck and his office designed over 150 completed structures, contributions and other projects .
Sonck remained a private architect all his life and, unlike many of his colleagues, did not teach at the Polytechnic Institute. His clientele essentially comprised people who came from his own social background: the upper middle class. Early on in his career, Sonck was familiar with circles in the Arkkitektiklubi (architects' club), but he was not politically active, as was the case e.g. B. Saarinen did. In 1930, the Association of Finnish Architects was looking for three important representatives of their class as their first honorary members. It was Eliel Saarinen , Onni Tarjanne and Lars Sonck. During the reception celebrations, Professor J. Sirén said of Sonck: “An energetic dramaturge of Finnish architecture, an incomparable master of gray granite and tarred wood.” The architect Bertel Jung said of him: “As an artist, he is such an architect that he often forgets or neglects details, ornamentation or color. For him, size and proportion are the most important things. Its strength lies in its limitation. "
Lars Sonck died on March 14, 1956 after a three-year illness in Helsinki; He was buried at his request in Finström, his home, to which he remained connected throughout his life.
Buildings (selection)
Wooden villas
Some ornate villas were built in Finland towards the end of the 19th century , largely based on the archetype of Theodor Policron Chiewitz , who came to Finland from Sweden . His villas contained properties of both the Swiss country house and the English country cottage . At the same time as this type of villa and its wooden ornamentation made from fretwork , a keen interest in authentic Finnish architecture awoke in Finland. At the turn of the century, finding a national, typically Finnish architectural style was on the agenda of architects.
Lars Sonck designed a few dozen villas at the beginning of the 20th century. Among them were a few experimental buildings in timber frame construction with board walls, but mainly he used unclad logs in his country villas. In the beginning, his villas in wooden plank construction included rich ornamentation, some with Karelian motifs, which extended from the roof turret to the profiled pillars of the veranda, as well as the decorations on the window frames or ceiling beams and door carvings. At first glance, Sonck's block villas were primarily inspired by East Karelian architecture. The rounded wood, the projecting saddle roof with wide eaves and the dominant gable architecture, as well as decorative wood turning and carving work were obviously seen as the Karelian basic features . These were used by Sonck freely or modified in his villas. The way the forms were handled had peculiarities that clearly show that Sonck had also studied traditional Swiss as well as Norwegian folk architecture.
Lasses Villa, Finström, 1895
The villa shows that Sonck must have been familiar with the “primeval Finnish” architecture of Karelia. The garden side of the villa, as well as the “Galdar”, a protruding balcony, show clear features of what he had previously studied and drawn in Karelia. On the other hand, the base made of coarse natural stone and the protruding corner merging at the corners of the building clearly show the origin of the Swiss country house style. The villa is in an ideal position: on one side, strongly elevated on a rocky slope towards a sound , on the other side towards a flat wooded area, with a path to a later built guest house and a summer studio for Sonck. The construction plans of the Lasses villa are no longer available. The original room layout was probably two or three living rooms, as well as a kitchen and two bedrooms. On both sides of the villa there was a veranda with oval openings, similar to ox eyes , which allowed a wide view of the lake.
Villa Ainola, Järvenpää, 1904
→ See also: Ainola
The Villa Ainola on Lake Tuusulanjärvi was designed for the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius . It was built on a rock ridge tapering to the south, with the main entrance, Sibelius' study and the kitchen on its north side. On the south side there was a dining room and library . Ainola owned straight edges of buildings, basements carved into the rock, and a caretaker's room. The roof is steep and complex, covered with vertically arranged shingles. There were four rooms on the ground floor, the study and bedrooms on the upper floor were not completed until years later. The room layout shows Sonck's sense of an irregular cut, but of balanced harmony . The angles at which light falls inside create a subdued, pleasant atmosphere . In addition, the features Villa Ainola a sauna , a wooden shed for wood stoves , and a small stable . The influences on the design of the Ainola design are less authentically Finnish than they are based on the architecture of England and the USA , which at the time repeatedly inspired the Swedish architects in particular. It can be said of Sonck's wooden villas that they have influences from several directions that are quite complex. Although in the end they appear typically Finnish or nationally romantic, Sonck has taken on and processed many international ideas that could be easily integrated into the Nordic architectural landscape of Finland and resulted in a balanced overall picture.
Churches
In the years around 1900 the church architecture underwent some fundamental renovations. This concerned both the room structure, volume arrangement , building materials and individual shape motifs. The Protestant Church had made Neo-Gothic its preferred architectural style , and this style dominated church architecture until the turn of the century. However, people began to use Gothic more and more freely and did not shy away from introducing Romanesque elements and motifs. The church with a nave and a tower , which was often varied in different ways, was built particularly often . In structuring the interior, it was important that the pastor could be easily seen and heard from every row. The intervals between the supports should be kept as large as possible, and the church itself should be approximately square. In Finland these innovations , which were introduced in German , English and American church circles, were evidently communicated precisely through German church architecture and through various publications .
A special sense of proportion was used to fit the churches harmoniously into their surroundings or to design them to emphasize the cityscape . The striving for a painterly effect of the entire ensemble was achieved by also designing the surroundings of the churches in detail. The most important feature of the external appearance, however, was the asymmetry . It concerned both the volume arrangement of the buildings and the windowing. The main tower was often positioned to the side of the central axis and any other towers could be of different heights. The surfaces of the gable roof were generally interrupted by transverse gables or rows of gables. The entire ensemble was intended to give the impression that the building had gradually been built over the course of centuries.
St. Michael, Turku, 1905
In 1894, while still a student , Sonck won the competition to design St. Michael's Church in Turku . His design provided for a three-aisled, long nave with a total of 39 meters in length and 21 meters in height. The critics feared that one would hardly understand the pastor because of the dimension of the room in the back rows . Nevertheless, the design, especially the gothic , laterally offset tower, made a positive impression on the jury . When Sonck was commissioned to draw the construction plans , Sonck had to revise and change his design several times, as there were always something to complain about on the part of his clients , so that in the end, when the church was completed in 1905, he was quite frustrated that not much was left of its original design. He also found that his church was not getting the dense urban development he wanted.
Sonck worked with the architects Max Frelander and Valter Jung on the detailed planning and interior design . In terms of its overall appearance, the Michaelskirche represents the neo-Gothic style of the late 19th century . The picturesque effect is created by the towers of different heights, the main tower positioned to the side of the main gable , the row of transverse gables that break up the structure , as well as the numerous side wings and chapel-like additions that surround the polygonal choir . A polychrome effect is created by the combination of red Swedish bricks on the facade , dark Norwegian roof slate , the pink granite zones and the ribbon and niche ornaments that structure the brick wall. Native granite was used in particular in the sloping parts of the buttresses and in some pediment triangles. Finnish soapstone was used for the window frames .
The interior of the church has three naves and spanned with star vaults, which are supported by massive granite columns. In the vault painting, the Art Nouveau ornamentation is combined with the leaf tendrils that are reminiscent of late medieval Finnish lime paintings .
St. John's Church / Tampere Cathedral, 1907
→ See also: Tampere Cathedral
The St. John's Church of Tampere , today's Cathedral is known as the main text of Sonck. With its coarse granite facade, the asymmetrical volume arrangements and the almost square church interior, it represents the new direction of Finnish church architecture in a typical way. The municipality's architectural competition of 1899/1900 stipulated that the church should be built from brick , granite or both materials. A tower and restrained decorative elements were further criteria. The congregation envisaged the character of an "evangelical temple" for their church.
The almost square floor plan of the church has three naves . One of the most difficult planning problems was that while you wanted more than 2,000 seats in the church, the financial resources were insufficient for such a size. Sonck solved this spatial problem by designing spacious galleries that surround the church interior on three sides. The result was a primarily wide, low room from which only the large star vault of the main nave rises higher. The exterior is characterized by a picturesque, multi-part structured volume arrangement with three towers of different heights and numerous gables , which obscures the basic structure of the church as a long church with towers. On the other hand, the treatment of the wall and roof surfaces is uniform and the shapes are simple and repetitive. The wall surfaces are made of light gray granite from Uusikaupunki . Window and door openings are framed with the same gray granite as the wall surfaces; the bezels themselves are not particularly emphasized. This unifies the wall surfaces and makes the windows appear as simple openings in the massive wall . The roof surfaces and the spiers are covered with local red tiles; the shape of the spiers is basically the same as that of St. Michael's Church.
The interior is dominated by a huge star vault with a span of 16 meters supported on two granite pillars . Its contours follow the gallery railing and thus contribute to the concentration of the space on the altar . The broad galleries and aisles remain in relative shadow. Valter Jung designed the decor, the frescoes and stained glass come from Hugo Simberg , the large altar fresco is from Magnus Enckell . In 1902 Sonck won the competition for the development of the city district in the area of the church, but here too the “medieval” city district did not come into being as he had wanted.
Kallio Church, Helsinki, 1912
The Kallio Church was the third church that Lars Sonck designed. Like the Michaels and Johannes Churches, the Kallio Church is also located outside the historic city center of Helsinki in the Kallio district , which grew rapidly in the late 19th century and was mostly inhabited by members of the working class . In early 1906, the Helsinki Council of Churches announced a competition for a new church. The competition challenged the participants to design a building that was in harmony with the Evangelical Lutheran worship service . In addition, the building should meet the needs and the spirit of the time, although it was allowed to break with the traditional traditions . Sonck won the competition with two submitted designs . He named the first after Damascus , it consisted of a rectangular plan with several separate secondary buildings. A massive, centrally placed tower should dominate the exterior.
With the second design, called Huss , Sonck was awarded the contract to build the church. This plan had an almost rectangular, cross-shaped floor plan, with a long nave with a choir , a tower and lower extensions on both sides. The vault of the main nave was originally supposed to contain three high arches , which ended in a dome , but Sonck replaced this with a straight barrel vault . During the construction work he changed the top of the tower and replaced the gable roof of the apse with a round, curved roof . The façade material remained, as in the St. John's Church, roughly processed granite , but all was in the Kallio Church asymmetry abandoned. The result is a strictly symmetrical architecture with an imposing appearance, aligned along the central axis . The church stands on a hill on which the lines of sight of several streets flow, which increases its powerful effect. Most of the granite facades are made of roughly hewn stone . With its stylized shape motifs and ornaments , also made of granite, the church corresponded to the ideas that were common during the planning period. The jury of the planning competition spoke of the "beauty of the outlines, tranquility and monumentality."
A large barrel vault spans the nave, to which galleries open under several arches. Although the floor plan is almost rectangular, as in the Johanneskirche, the strict axial symmetry of the church gives the impression of an elongated architecture. This impression is reinforced by the straight nave and the subordinate galleries. The atmosphere differs from the Johanneskirche through the effect of colored daylight and the sparse ornamentation, which essentially consists of painted art and four plaster reliefs by Sigrid af Forselles . Jean Sibelius composed a special melody for the carillon of the tower bells . The positioning of the pulpit on the central axis of the church, above the choir and altar , to which stairs lead up behind the altar, is original . The organ is to the left of the altar.
Michael's Church in Turku essentially combines international neo-Gothic with some features of Art Nouveau . St. John's Church in Tampere is based in part on St. Michael's Church , but also makes references to Finland's medieval church architecture. The Kallio Church, on the other hand, is a completely independent structure that is not based on any historical style . Past forms can only be recognized by the distribution of the volumes ; so was Sigurd Frosterus of view Kallio Church resembles an Egyptian sphinx .
Urban office buildings
Finland's first office buildings were built in Helsinki at the turn of the century. It was new to Finland to erect buildings for business purposes only and without housing. The first large office buildings for insurance companies were not built in Helsinki until the early 1910s. Natural stone as a facade material had almost become the norm back then. It was considered a symbol of reliability, stability and security. Also, only large companies could afford this expensive building material. Construction activity by the banks in particular was very brisk; Most banks and savings banks had their new or first business building built in Helsinki at the turn of the century.
Telephone Company House, Helsinki, 1905
In 1903 Lars Sonck received the planning contract for the house of the Helsinki telephone company. What is interesting about this building is the expressive, massive facade made of roughly machined granite . The architecture, visible from the street, with its steep roofs made of light-colored tiles and its towers, formed a self-contained whole. In addition to large stone blocks, the apparently random combination of two differently colored types of granite on the wall surfaces was essential for the façades. The third facade material was light-colored, smoothly worked soapstone , which particularly emphasizes the horizontal lines of the building. The horizontality is increased by grouping the windows into ribbon-shaped rows. In the soapstone elements of the window areas there are engraved, geometrically stylized ornaments with floral motifs that can only be recognized up close. The facade design has a lot in common with that of the Tampere Cathedral , including the use of the triangular shape or the round window. Sonck's goal here was to handle asymmetry, a wealth of variants and strong texture in a disciplined and balanced manner.
The telephone company building was to contain offices, rooms for technology and apartments. With regard to the function of the building, there was no architecture in Finland that could have served as a model. Before the design process began in 1901, Sonck traveled abroad to find inspiration for his building.
Sonck's approach to this new type of building was in a certain sense contradictory: Architecturally, Sonck's design was of high quality and represented a positive extension of the cityscape. On the other hand, its rustic exterior in no way suggested the new communication technology ; one felt more reminiscent of the Middle Ages . KS Kallio put it this way: "The rough granite surface of the building walls, in which the deep-seated windows look like cave entrances, create a strange and archaic impression for a modern telephone exchange." The only feature that allows conclusions about the building's function is a short one Frieze with "technical" ornamentation that runs above the bay window. The entire window area is quite small compared to the wall sizes and the building volume, which is accentuated by a protruding tower, has a castle-like appearance. The models Sonck looked for in southern European medieval cityscapes are particularly reflected in his first drafts from 1903. There he placed the tower far from the main building, protruding out onto the sidewalk, which would have given the building an enormous effect along the line of sight of the street.
In order to accommodate the various facilities and operating systems of the building, an almost labyrinthine floor plan was necessary. The stairwell is characteristic, entered from the outside through an arched entrance and enlivened by various types of exterior windows.
Finnish Mortgage Association, Helsinki, 1909
In 1907, Lars Sonck designed the building for the Finnish Mortgage Association . The expression of the building was new to Sonck, but also significant for the rest of contemporary Finnish architecture. It meant a rejection of the asymmetrical appearance of the Eira Hospital and the telephone company building, towards a symmetrically designed facade with a strongly accentuated front colonnade . Sonck's facade was completely in line with a new trend that turned away from the free design of the first years of the 20th century and thus favored the symmetrical, strictly structured facade. In the building of the Mortgage Association, the free-standing facade colonnade gained new interest after it had gone out of fashion in the turbulent years of the turn of the century.
The most obvious motif of the facade is clearly the colonnade over a series of door and window arches on the ground floor. The colonnade is bounded by the solid facade walls on its left and right side. The order of the three-dimensional row of columns is less classical than Egyptian . The ornate capitals lead in a rather unclassical manner to a kind of attic . The facade consists of smooth, light granite from Uusikaupunki and is varied, but symmetrical, structured by protruding and recessed components, cornices and eaves that completely cover the roof.
The Mortgage Association building was built for commercial purposes and originally housed several banks. Due to the narrow, but deep, property dimensions, the facade is quite narrow, which is why Sonck had little space for windows. On the street side of the third floor, he resorted to a skylight so as not to break through the entirety of the wide area above the colonnade. The almost symmetrical floor plan corresponds to the likewise symmetrical facade. In order to direct daylight into the rooms, Sonck designed the middle part to be quite narrow (not wider than the main staircase) in order to place a large hall immediately next to it, which was provided with a large skylight. This hall was reached directly through the vaulted entrance corridor. The interior as well as the facade ornamentation come from David Frölander and Sigurd Frosterus . Parts of the interior have recently been restored, but much of the original decor is barely there. The size and height of the adjoining buildings only give an idea of the originally monumental effect of the Mortgage Association building.
Individual evidence
literature
- Dennis Sharp: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Architects and Architecture , New York: Quatro Publishing, 1991. ISBN 0-8230-2539-X , p. 145
- Paula Kivinen: "Lars Sonck's life", in: Museum of Finnish Architecture (ed.): Lars Sonck, 1870-1956, Architect . Helsinki 1981, pp. 7-12
- Paula Kivinen: "Early Period - National Romanticism 1894-1907", in: Museum of Finnish Architecture (ed.): Lars Sonck, 1870-1956, Architect . Helsinki 1981, pp. 13-62
- Korvenmaa, Pekka: "Architecture of Lars Sonck 1905-1945", in: Museum of Finnish Architecture (ed.): Lars Sonck, 1870-1956, Architect . Helsinki 1981, pp. 63-125
- Riitta Nikula: built landscape. Finland's architecture at a glance . Helsinki 1993. ISBN 9511125354
- Adolph Stiller (ed.): Finland: Architecture in the 20th century . Salzburg 2002
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Sonck, Lars |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Sonck, Lars Eliel (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Finnish architect of national romanticism |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 10, 1870 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Kälviä |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 14, 1956 |
| Place of death | Helsinki |