Helsinki is like Milan, a city that’s infused with both old and new energies. In the monstrous, postmodern urban plaza near our hotel, lined with high-rise apartments and shopping malls, there were stands selling African food and a DJ broadcasting hip hop. And at the other end of the plaza there was Mannerheimintie, the broad, bustling cobblestone avenue that cuts through the city center, anchored by a cluster of impossibly stately nineteenth-century buildings. With dark brick, copper roofs, and cast stone details, they have a consistently fine level of ornament that makes them feel more lively than similar buildings in central Stockholm and Copenhagen. They give the city tremendous gravity, and also a compelling backdrop for contemporary goings-on.

No doubt the jewels of the old buildings, both right on Mannerheimintie, are Helsinki Central Station and The National Museum of Finland. They were designed by Eliel Saarinen, before the great architect left the country to take a teaching residency at Cranbrook Academy in Michigan. While they’re built with the same materials and in the same scale as surrounding buildings, their facades are decorated with a unique theatricality. They’ve got exquisite stone and metal details, and are brought to life with some marvelous figures. There are two giant male caryatids flanking the Station’s front entrance, holding disc-shaped lamps in front like religious offerings, and a proud black bear at the entrance steps to the Museum that roars in welcome. Yet the buildings don’t feel like stage sets; they have the naturalness of mountains.

July 09, 2012 by Nalina Moses

Like its famous public library, Stockholm’s cemetery, Skogskyrkogården, is an icon of modern architecture. Based on a winning competition entry by Gunnar Asplund and Sigurd Lewerentz, it was completed between 1917 and 1940 and still serves the city. On the afternoon I visited people were gathering outside one of the chapels for a service. The crematorium, chapels, and gardens at Skogskyrkogården are revered by architecture teachers and students everywhere because they are built so simply and finely. This is certainly true. Each element – roof, paving, door, window – has been reduced to essentials. A door is simply a flush panel in the wall. A fence is simply a stone wall with a metal coping. A patio is simply a row of stone tiles set in the lawn. Yet these structures aren’t naive; they’re precise, elegant and resonant.

What might be even more remarkable than the refinement in the construction is the way that the dead are present here. Do Scandinavians have a more holistic understanding of death than Americans do? Right at the center of the cemetery there’s a clearing with a meditation garden built on a rise that resembles the sixth century burial mounds in Uppsala. As one moves through the chapels this formation is never out of sight. There are over 90,000 graves here, most buried with simple, stone markers within the groves of high pine trees that make up most of the grounds. They lie low, between the trunks, just barely visible. The city cab driver who accompanied us to and through the grounds told us, with perfect equanimity, that his own mother and father were buried there. One of my companions responded, “The dead must feel at peace here." I concur.

July 06, 2012 by Nalina Moses

For many years my schlepping bag has been the LLBean Boat and Tote. It’s attractive, sturdy, comes in every size and color and, depending on how you carry it, preppy or modern. But the Fjällräven Kanken knapsack I brought back as a souvenir from Stockholm is winning me over. Lord knows what the bag signifies to fashionable Swedes, but to New Yorkers it’s a dowtown classic, worn with flowered dresses and plaid shirts by ladies on the L-train. (There’s a Fjällräven boutique in NoLIta, and basic colors are available through JCrew and ASOS.) I would like to think that the bag is something Swedish schoolchildren carry around, though the Swedish schoolchildren I saw looked not-at-all different from American schoolchildren, carrying backpacks adorned with superheroes and princesses.

While the Kanken was developed ergonomically to distribute weight correctly over the back, I’m most impressed by its lightness and simplicity of design. Most nylon knapsacks have awkward egg-like proportions and are encrusted with zippers, pockets, toggles and straps. I’ve always wished that my Boat and Tote had an additional layer of details: an inside pocket for papers, a zippered compartment for pencils, and buckles to adjust the strap length. The Kanken has these things, as well as platonic, squared-off proportions. The first time I took my Kanken out it was stuffed full with folders, clipboard and measuring tapes, and it started to rain mid-day. The bag was easy to carry, both in my hand and on my back, and the water streamed right off of it. It simply works.

July 05, 2012 by Nalina Moses

Buildings I learned about as a student – through photographs and drawings – have a persistence in the mind that real buildings often don’t. Gunnar Asplund’s Bibliotek in Stockholm is one of those buildings. I learned about it more than twenty years ago in an art history lecture and its parti – a cylinder set within a cube – stayed with me. While embedded in the modern canon, it’s a building celebrated for its eccentricity. It stands for a very early modernism, a non-International Style modernism, and a Scandinavian brand of modernism. It’s the building’s plan I remember best, with its awesome platonic geometries.

Visiting the library itself was something altogether different. The building is in good condition and remains a working branch of the Stockholm public library. It’s close to the city center, near Stockholm University, tucked away behind a large stagnant pool (also designed by Asplund), next door to a McDonalds. The evening I visited the place was busy with children, college students, and adults stopping by on their way home from work. The drum-like central hall, lined with stacks of low, curving, bookshelves and lit from windows high above, was cluttered with a temporary stage, display tables, folding chairs, and carts of books waiting to be reshelved. It’s finishes were just as dreary as those one would find in any public library: linoleum floor tile, varnished woodwork, and painted brick. Through it all the pristine geometry of the central hall asserted itself, reaffirming Architecture within the assault of everyday life. I doubt that most Stockholmers see that their library is an icon of modern architecture. But the building adds some splendor to their lives, which is much more than most.

July 03, 2012 by Nalina Moses