Press

/ 2010

Young Spirit Of Nature Wood Architecture Award given to Sanna Jokimäki

The recipient of the 2010 Young Spirit of Nature Wood Architecture Award is Sanna Jokimäki, Architect SAFA, from Vaasa, Finland. Her Master’s thesis, ‘Views on Prefabricated Modular Architecture, School Construction as an Implementation’, was accepted by the School of Architecture at the Tampere University of Technology in April 2010. 

The Young Spirit of Nature Wood Architect Award is now granted for the first time. The award, EUR 5,000 in size, is granted by the Wood in Culture Association. The recipient was announced in Helsinki on 9 September 2010, and the award will be conferred at a gala event at the Sibelius Hall in Lahti on 10 September 2010. 

The Award was established in 2009 on the initiative of the Finnish Forest Foundation, with the aim of encouraging students of architecture to use wood creatively. The award is granted for an architectural Master’s thesis in which timber as material holds a central role. Each of the three Finnish universities with a Department or School of Architecture were requested to nominate three candidates for the Jury’s selection. 

’Using criteria that she herself has derived, Jokimäki proposes a system of prefabricated wooden building modules and demonstrates its feasibility by means of a school extension plan. The careful and detailed studies of the technical solutions in wood construction show that the use of prefabricated modules can provide a healthy construction alternative which is spatially flexible, capable of being prefabricated to a significant degree and highly economical. The solution also has the potential for subtle and sensitive architecture, as is beautifully proven by Sanna Jokimäki’s thesis,’ writes Professor Matti Rautiola, Chairman of the Jury. 

‘My Master’s thesis started out from the national Innoschool project, which included a contest for students, looking for innovative solutions to build a portable and adaptable school of wood,’ says Sanna Jokimäki. ‘A few months after the contest I returned to the topic with a view to doing my Master’s on it. As the work progressed it became clear that the topic was very diverse – like a branching tree where each branch brings in a new perspective.’ 

Sanna Jokimäki was born in Kauhajoki in 1985 and took her Matriculation Examination in the Laihia Upper Secondary School in 2004. She completed her architectural degree in 2010 and currently works for a company of architectural consultants in Vaasa, on the west coast of Finland.