The Implementation of Cartographies of Imagined Landscapes in the Architectural Project

Raili and Reima Pietilä's architecture burst onto the architectural scene in the mid-twentieth century with a new approach to the genesis of the architectural project. Their interest focused on the multiple forms of relationship between architecture and the territory, which led them to take a specific look at the Finnish landscape. The couple found their main source of inspiration in nature. This exploration of the natural components was not limited to the current condition of the landscape, but was approached in its full magnitude, making imaginary journeys to past natures, especially those of the Arctic glacial period. His reinterpretation and its application in the architectural process defined mostly his first joint period of the 1960s, although it was present throughout his career. Most of the projects and the theoretical reflections developed shared the same starting point, the metamorphosis of the ancient natural forms that characterised the Finnish landscape into unique architectural expressions. This research aims to recover and analyse the process of graphic creation, illustrating this reinterpretation of the Finnish Arctic landscape through cartographies and abstract compositions, and how these in turn became the genesis of the architectural project, based on the analysis of the drawings preserved in the archive of the Museum of Finnish Architecture. A process that starts from an imaginary journey made by Reima to past times, in which the power of nature defined the landscape and that, on her way back, these forms transmuted into architecture, which was documented through the drawing.