Kaleva Church

The Kaleva competition of 1959 was won by Reima Pietilä; the church was built in 1964–66 by the office he had founded with Raili Paatelainen in 1960, and from 1963 every work of that office was officially attributed to both of them. It stands on a low hill where two of Tampere's main streets converge, and it does not look like a church from any angle. Seventeen hollow concrete piers, 35 metres high, stand in a ring; each is a slightly different U in section, and the gaps between them are glazed from ground to roof. The walls were slip-formed in twelve days using the technique Finnish contractors had developed for grain silos, which earned the building its local nickname, the Silo of the Souls. The plan closes as the outline of a fish. Inside, a room 30 metres high seats 1,120 people, everything fitted out in lacquered Finnish pine.