Conversations: Pekko Sangi & Troy Raisanen
I had the pleasure of connecting with Pekko Sangi, a recent architecture graduate from Finland, through my friend and colleague Troy Raisanen, a Finnish-American designer based in Los Angeles. Troy and Pekko studied together at Tampere University (TTY) a few years ago - Tampere is the home to one of only three programs in architecture in all of Finland. Our conversation dove into our shared experiences of being international students in foreign countries, searching for a sense of heritage, and finding a future in architecture.
PS/ “Let’s go back to 2011. I applied for the third time, and finally got in. I was doing my military service in Finland and applied during my holidays. I first said I wanted to become an architect when I was 8 years old. My uncle was an architect, so he was my first influence. He gave me my first stencil ruler.
I was always building everything. It was typical for me to be creative and build things by hand. I used to draw a lot, and thought I would be a reporter in a magazine. Then I realized that the reporter is not the person who actually makes the layout of the newspaper, and then I decided I would be the person who does make the layout. I ended up in architecture school.
In Finland, everyone applies to the Master’s studies from the beginning. If you go to university you are automatically enrolled to complete a Master’s degree. Education is free, but there is a 3-part examination in order to get into the program: you may have to draw, build models, a math exam, and a drawing skill exam. I think the Architecture entrance exams are the longest one. You get points from different sections, but then you also get points from the high school transcript. In terms of the length of the program, I ended up doing a 7+2 (undergraduate + graduate), but in theory it would be a 3+2 system - nobody really completes it that way. Completing your education in 6-7 years is generally considered fast. Everyone goes to work in an office after the undergraduate degree, and so you’re working and studying at the same time. I chose to work full time, and then stop it so I could go back to studying full time.
TR/ “This fluid combination of having academic experience intermixed with professional experience created cohorts with a lot of variety. It was very vertical and a completely different experience for me, coming from the United States. You had everyone in the school together, and it was a very enriching experience to have people in several years with work experience going through their education side by side.
PS/ During my Master’s course of study, I had the opportunity to spend some time in Colorado, in the US. There was a Finnish girl in my school studying Architecture who always wanted to study the States, who contacted this one Finnish professor in the University of Colorado. Turns out they were looking for students from Finland to come for a semester-long study track, and that started a scholarship program for Finnish students. When I went, my scholarship was for two years, but I wasn’t sure for how long I would want to stay. I stayed one year and finished my Master here in Finland.
TR/ I have Finnish heritage from both my parents, but didn’t really grow up knowing what being Finnish meant. We’d make Finnish bread. But then Juhani Pallasmaa visited NDSU and lectured, and I thought ‘wait, this is Finnish?’ There was something there, a pull to know more. I decided to go abroad to Finland and explore what the cultural heritage meant to me.
At the time TTY had an erasmus exchange program that you could apply as a free-mover student. I applied on my own doing and spent a full year studying in Finland. I took the year as an elective year abroad - eventually some classes were transferred but not all. There is a really robust program set up to host international students - there was even a tutor!
TR/ I found that, in Finland, there was a full conversation to be had and a lot of curiosity and passion around architecture. It is a highly regarded profession there, and in those small moments I found the relevance of the profession. People tended to know architects. Alvar Aalto was the biggest celebrity - he was in one of the paper bills in currency. I think this perception is due to the post-war rebuilding, and architects seem to be a big part of this rebuild.
PS/ In Finland, we live in a forest, not so much in architecture. The majority of our buildings were built within the last 150 years - the wooden ones from the Middle Ages are mostly destroyed. In comparison to the rest of Europe, our built environment is very young.
PS/ The licensing aspect is also something we do different than the rest of the world. Firstly, the title of architect is not protected - anyone can say they are. What architects do is add SAFA after their name, which means you are part of this professional organization from Finland and come from a proper Master’s program of architecture. There are no other steps after receiving your Master’s degree.
Hiring architects ends up being too expensive for the general public here. You don’t really see architects working for regular people - they are hidden. The majority of offices in Finland work on large projects in housing, if that is the case. It’s just too expensive for big offices to design single-family houses. Architects will normally develop permit drawings, and a civil engineer will need to work on the calculations. If you want to be an architect who signs off on structural things you need to pursue those studies in university.
TR/ One of my friends in Finland brought me to his brother’s house. It was designed by an architect, and it was small and thoughtful. That must have been an exception to the rule.
PS/ That would make sense. As a recent graduate, I am not sure what I want to work on, but I do know what I don’t want: housing design. I feel like the majority of housing design in Finland is run by construction companies and are pretty monotonous. The number of processed materials being used is high, but the number of details is low, and I wish it were the opposite. I would love to work in some smaller scale - that’s the most important thing to me.
TS/ The other thing you did in Colorado was experience a design-build project. Is that the direction you’d like to go in?
PS/ Yes, I liked that format a lot. The same people designed, drew, built, and even tested. It would be great to bring this concept to Finland. I’ve never worked in the US, but I’ve been thinking about the differences in workplace culture between here and there. We have far more summer holidays in Finland. We get an entire month off in the summer, and that is paid time off. We have no darkness during that time of the year so it’s very important, culturally, to enjoy it.
Maybe the hierarchies in the American workplace are stronger than here. I think in the US you have to have a stronger brand as a designer, in your portfolio, in your social media. In Finland we only look at the work you’ve done, your personally may matter less. Perhaps it’s a cliché, but Finnish people tend to be less social.
TR/ I think there may be some neat ways to enter the field that are uniquely Finnish. Architectural competitions in Finland are different from the rest of the world, for instance. Often, firms are formed after winning one. You can win work even if you are a new graduate, by winning competitions.”
PS/ But architects are normally not paid to participate. It’s an old tradition that SAFA organizes competitions - they guarantee the quality by organizing it, and make it fair for everybody to access its entry. It’s pretty normal for younger architects to win and beat old offices. It’s a good way to start as a young architect, because it provides you with references, which are important for the construction companies that you move on to work with.
I do feel like I have a lot of possibilities in front of me, having just graduated. It would be possible to start a small business from the beginning, for instance. The freedom of not having to hurry into working life, and having time to think about what happens next is the thing I am most excited about.”
As told to GB.
