Los pabellones que no fueron. Pietilä y el Pabellón Nórdico de la Bienal de Venecia

The beginning of Reima Pietilä’s career was defined by the success of his project for the Finnish Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels Exhibition, and characterised by compositional experiments based on modules. This international recognition led to his being invited to take part in the competition for the design of the Nordic Pavilion for the 1958 Venice Biennale. The first prize for design, awarded to the project by Sverre Fehn, obscured interest in all other proposals. The aim of this text is therefore to publicise the proposals drawn up by Reima Pietilä, placing them within a historical context where architecture would gradually leave behind the restrictive modular tracery for form based on the recognition of place. The analysis of the documentation found in the archive of Arkkitehtuurimuseo – the Museum of Finnish Architecture (MFA) has become a research tool for recognising the genealogy of the project, revealing different approaches to the competition which show Pietilä’s new interests. His proposals for Venice have revealed hitherto unseen approaches to the landscape which form the basis of his later work.