Welcome on HIM - His Infernal Magazine, the on-line magazine of HIM - The Crimson Gate Official Italian Street Team! All materials and products are property of HIM - the Crimson Gate Italian Street Team and is forbidden to copy all the contents of this magazine.

HOME interviewEditorial HIM Live Under the Heartagram mark (reviews) HIM Video Music and its stereotypes Directly from FinlandOther MusicCinema Our Readings World Of Mistery Him Art and Poetry

DIRECTLY FROM FINLAND

THE PLACES OF THE HEART: HELSINKI, TEMPELLIAUKIO

The design is one the strengths of Finnish culture, a culture that doesn’t certainly lunge the roots in a thousand years old tradition such as ours , but that’s been able to merge classic and modern elements in one very original and exclusive , that reports a definitely sole and easily detectable mark.
And so, wishing to build a church in one of the Helsinki’s areas where the ground has the rocky granite roughness , every architect would have thought of a building erected on the high ground dominating the surrounding view ; instead the architects Timo and Tuomo Suomalainen thought , in 1969, to build a place where the religiosity was expressed through nature and in communion with it. So they decided to excavate the hill made of granite on which to erect a circular building , surmounted by a dome almost flat shaped made by a copper wire that’s 23 km long, spiral coiled , and by reinforced with pillars of vitrified ferroconcrete through which the light gets inside.
The architecture reminds the shape of a pantheon , but the interior of the church has its charming point in the granite walls ; the veins of the natural stone take colour from light brown to more intense red according to the penetrating light.
In the rainy days the rainwater filters through the rocks and is convoyed in the drainage channel covered by a floor grate: these are the moments where the same building seems to take life. The run of the water nearly becomes a soft melody , the voice of the nature that raises the prayer to its Creator.
The furniture is simple and essential , as usual in every Lutheran church . The simplicity is the mark of this building where the spirituality wants to be represented by little and bare symbols :the crucifix placed in front of the altar , simply and naked also, the birch benches, typical essence of the Finnish nature, and the great organ (with over 3000 pipes)that uses the excellent acoustic of the building and that is played often at concerts but also during many tourists’ visits that alternate inside the temple .
Tempelliaukio , with an access from Lutherinkatu , rises in Toolo quarter, dominated by vanguard architectural elements ; in the surroundings we find the prestigious Sibelius Akatemia and next the Taidehalli, the art exhibition; little farther we arrive to Sibeliuksen puisto , the park that has the Jan Sibelius monument at its centre.

Mrs.Lindstrom-Rosanna

Planned and developed by Mrs Lindstrom with the help of Nailedtoacross, Legolas di Mirkwood,
Shikaia590Editor in chief: Mrs Lindstrom, Graphic Project: Dan[616]