Wivi Lönn practised at a period when the terms of architecture itself were under argument.
The record lists Wivi Lönn as Finnish architect (1872-1966).
Wivi Lönn was born in 1872. His recorded nationality is Grand Duchy of Finland.
Industrialisation gave architecture iron, glass and the lift, and with them the problems of the railway station, the factory and the tall city block.
Buildings outlast their architects and usually their purposes, which is what makes the discipline unforgiving.
That the work was built in Grand Duchy of Finland shaped it: climate, materials, planning law and who holds the budget all decide what can actually be built.
Wivi Lönn died in 1966, aged 94. The buildings remain, still in use by people who never knew the name - which is the particular afterlife architecture offers.
