Kaleva Church ( fi, Kalevan kirkko; sv, Kalevakyrkan) is an

Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland ( fi, Suomen evankelis-luterilainen kirkko; sv, Evangelisk-lutherska kyrkan i Finland) is a national church of Finland. It is part of the Lutheran branch of Christianity. The church has a legal positio ...

church in the

Liisankallio Liisankallio is a district of Tampere, Finland. The district, formerly known as ''Tammelan vainio'' ("Tammela Field"), is located east of the Tammela, Tampere, Tammela and Tulli (district), Tulli districts. To the north is the Petsamo, Tampere, P ...

district of

Tampere Tampere ( , , ; sv, Tammerfors, ) is a city in the Pirkanmaa region, located in the western part of Finland. Tampere is the most populous inland city in the Nordic countries. It has a population of 244,029; the urban area has a population o ...

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

. It was designed by

Reima and Raili Pietilä Frans Reima Ilmari Pietilä (25 August 1923 – 26 August 1993) was a Finnish architect and theorist. He did most of his work together with his wife Raili Pietilä (Raili Inkeri Marjatta née Paatelainen, 15 August 1926 – 16 May 2021); after 19 ...

and built in 1964–66. The church accommodates approximately 1,120 people. It is considered an example of modern architectural style and is one of the main sights of

History

Kaleva parish was established in 1953. but without its own church. In 1959, the board of the Evangelical Lutheran Churches in Tampere announced a competition to design a church building for the parish. The entry selected was by architect Reima Pietilä, whose architectural partner (and, from 1963, wife) Raili Paatelainen later became involved in the project. The site chosen for the church was a small hill at the head of the convergence of two of Tampere's major streets:

Teiskontie Teiskontie is a street and highway in Tampere, Finland. As its name implies, it runs from the center of Tampere towards Teisko, a former municipality connected to Tampere in 1972. To the east of the highway junction of Hervanta, it is part of Hig ...

and

Sammonkatu Sammonkatu is a wide park street in the Kaleva (Tampere), Kaleva district in Tampere, Finland. It starts at the intersection of Itsenäisyydenkatu (formerly known as ''Puolimatkankatu'') and Teiskontie (formerly ''Teiskonkatu''). The street is ...

Architecture

The building was constructed using

slip forming Slip forming, continuous poured, continuously formed, or slipform construction is a construction method in which concrete is poured into a continuously moving form.Nawy, ''Concrete Construction Engineering Handbook,'' 2008, p. 10—33. Slip formi ...

. It is made from 17 narrow 35m-high hollow concrete u-shapes, with full height windows between them. Like the windows, there are also 18 entrances to the building. These concrete u’s are all slightly different. Because at the time many grain elevators in Finland were built with slip forming, the church got the nicknames “Silo of the Souls” and “Viljanen’s Silo” (referring to the Vicar Paavo Viljanen). The 35m-high walls were cast in 12 days.FinnishAchitecture.fi
– Kaleva Church The surface area of the church is 3,600m², and its volume is 47,000m³. The floor plan of the church resembles a fish, an ancient symbol of Christianity. The main hall is 30 metres high and offers seating for 1120 people. The roof of the church is flat, and surmounted by a bell tower in the shape of a stylised cross, housing three bells manufactured in

West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...

. In addition to the main hall, the church features a

chapel A chapel is a Christian place of prayer and worship that is usually relatively small. The term has several meanings. Firstly, smaller spaces inside a church that have their own altar are often called chapels; the Lady chapel is a common ty ...

, sacristy and auxiliary facilities. All furnishings in the church are made of lacquered Finnish

pine A pine is any conifer tree or shrub in the genus ''Pinus'' () of the family Pinaceae. ''Pinus'' is the sole genus in the subfamily Pinoideae. The World Flora Online created by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Missouri Botanical Garden accepts ...

Recognition

The plans for the church had already received international attention before building started. The church is considered to be among the key works of post-war Finnish modernism and was protected by the Church Act in 2006. Kaleva Church is featured on the

Docomomo Docomomo International (sometimes written as DoCoMoMo or simply Docomomo) is a non-profit organization whose full title is: International Committee for Documentation and Conservation of Buildings, Sites and Neighbourhoods of the Modern Movement. ...

Finland list of modern Finnish architectural masterpieces.DOCOMOMO
– Kaleva Church

References

External links

{{Tampere Cityscape Lutheran churches in Finland Buildings and structures in Tampere Reima and Raili Pietilä buildings 20th-century churches in Finland