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Location: Finland
Date: 1999
Architects: Casagrande & Rintala
Photographs: Nikta Wu

Project Description

A dramatic architectural installation designed to draw attention to the plight of the Finnish countryside.

Three abandoned barnhouses have cut their primeval union with the soil and have risen on their legs, in order to follow the farmers to the cities in the South. 

On a dark night in October, the installation was set to fire according to the choreography of contemporary dancer Reijo Kela. 

Some 6,000 people came to watch. The installtion commented on the desertion process of the Finnish countryside. It is (or was) both a celebration of the traditional Finnish landscape and farming practices and a protest against the endless growth of the low density suburbs which now surround every Finnish settlement.

 

The whole was in many ways a contemporary interpretation of monument, poetic, moving, its only remaining presence on film and video.