This year the theme of the seminar is to discuss the architect’s responsibility for biodiversity, sustainable development and the climate crisis.
The SAFA seminar Arkkitehtipäivät is the major event of Finnish Association of Architects’, gathering some 250 to 400 Finnish architects and architect students together annually. This year the seminar will be held on Friday May 5th, 2023 in Vantaa, which is part of Helsinki region and one of the major cities in Finland.
The theme of the seminar is to discuss the architect’s responsibility for biodiversity, sustainable development and the climate crisis. The keynote speakers are architects Frédéric Chartier and Almut Grüntuch-Ernst.
Frédéric Chartier founded ChartierDalix with Pascale Dalix in 2008. Noticed at several international competitions, the office has received numerous awards, including the Première Œuvre du Moniteur prize in 2009. The office has been nominated for the Mies van der Rohe Award in 2015 as well as received the Le Soufaché prize in 2017, awarded by the french Académie d’architecture. Recent works include winning the international competition (2021) for the reconstruction of the Bockmühle school campus in Essen (Germany), and for restructuring of a block in Warsaw. ChartierDalix has published a book entitled «Hosting life: Architecture as an Ecosystem» (ParkBooks). ”Architecture is envisaged as a built system combining the means to welcome life, poetry, and the commons”, Frédéric Chartier states their design philosophy.
Almut Grüntuch-Ernst has founded together with Armand Grüntuch their architecture firm in 1991 in Berlin. She studied at the University of Stuttgart and the AA London, worked for Alsop & Lyall in London and was a teacher at HdK Berlin. She is regularly invited for lectures and to take part in the selection committees of important competitions. In 2006 she had been appointed commissioner for the German contribution to the 10. International Architecture Biennale in Venice. Since 2011 she is chair of the Institute of Design and Architectural Strategies at TU Braunschweig. From 2010 to 2015 she was on the consultant committee for city planning in Munich and since 2016 she has been a member of the Academy of Arts Berlin.
The seminar program will consist of Friday’s lecturers and dinner on Friday night. Before the seminar day, on Thursday, there will be walking tours in Tikkurila, Vantaa and Pecha Kucha presentations on current topics in Finnish architecture. On Saturday there will be excursions highlighting the modern architecture of Vantaa.
The list of past Arkkitehtipäivät keynote speakers has included architects such as Souto de Moura (1992), Glenn Murcutt (2003), Sou Fujimoto (2008), Bjarke Ingels (2008), Ruye Nishizawa (2011), Julien de Smedt (2014), Achim Menges (2017) and Alison Brooks (2021).