Lars Sonck
Lars Sonck designed Tampere Cathedral and the Telephone Company building in Helsinki in rough granite. His National Romanticism combined medieval Finnish churches, American architecture and Finnish nature.
Lars Sonck was born in 1870 in Kälviä in Ostrobothnia and grew up in Finström on Åland, where his father was a clergyman. He studied architecture at the Polytechnic Institute in Helsinki and graduated in 1894. While still a student he won the competition for St Michael’s Church in Turku. He travelled in Europe and studied medieval churches and castles. He also designed his own summer villa in Finström, Lasses villa, built of logs.
In 1900 Sonck won the competition for St John’s Church in Tampere, today the cathedral, which was built in 1902–1907 of rough-hewn granite. In Helsinki he designed the Telephone Company building, 1903–1905, and the Stock Exchange, and he also designed Kallio Church, with a tall tower that can be seen across the city. He designed villas, sanatoria and town plans. His architecture was marked by the weight of stone and by animal and plant motifs from Finnish nature.
Sonck died in 1956. He is regarded as perhaps the most consistent architect of Finnish National Romanticism. In the 1910s his style became more classical, in step with the changing times. He also designed Jean Sibelius’s villa Ainola in Järvenpää, a log house that became one of the symbols of Finnish culture. His work shows how National Romanticism could be combined with a monumental, almost American power.