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In winter 2015, when our project in Finland was finalized, Serlachius foundation invited three experts in Nordic architecture. Three professors with different backgrounds and different age. Professors Juhani Pallasma (Finland), Peter Mckeith (USA) and Jaime Ferrer (Spain), got together to discuss about one of the most “Finnish” buildings build in the last years, as Pallasma himself described it.

That meetiing review turned into a delicate publication by Serlachius Foundation that compiles the experts’ texts, author’s texts and drawings, together with Photographer Pedro Pegenaute´s vision of the building in a Nordic Light, like the name of the book itself.

“With the architects coming from more southern cultures, it is interesting to consider how the building reflects the continuum and atmosphere of Finnish architecture … how strongly the museum is attached to its broader context of landscape and culture” Juhani Pallasmaa

(From the text: “ The Gösta Art Museum as an Architectonic Experience” )
“…their geographical distance from Mänttä allowed for an objective assessment of the site, while their sense of diplomacy in working on behalf of another nation’s culture demanded a precise delicacy to their site response” Peter Mackeith
(From his text “In a Finnish Light”)

…”integrating local and universal architectural values and traditions with contemporary understanding and techniques to create humane, sustainable and site-specific response architecture with an updated version of Vitruvius’ triad: firmitas, a combination of traditional craft with technological innovation, utilitas, social responsibility and concern for multifunctional uses allowing flexibility, and venustas, beauty, suggesting an emotional touch, an artistic dimension and also haptic architecture centred on the qualities of the materials” Prof. Jaime Ferrer
(From his text “The Forest Room” )