Originally published in Domus 449/April 1967
Here Tapio Wirkkala is working on
the huge and beautiful veneer relief he designed for Montreal.[1] Four metres wide and nine metres long, the relief is composed of twenty-three pieces; a total of five and a
half cubic metres of plywood was used for the sculpture, and T.W.
had four men to help with the carving, using axes and chisels.
Wirkkala for Montreal—
The extraordinary piece of high carpentry Wirkkala realised in 1967 for the Scandinavian Pavilion From the archive
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An extraordinary piece of technical acrobacy, its name is Ultima Thule, the confines of the world. Large as it is, the closer you look at it the larger it gets, a landscape without end, turned by the wind, surface of ice which the water erodes, desert seen from the air: scale is forgotten and the matter as well.
A work of this bravura is rare. A bravura sustained, as it were, by a dedication. As in Wirkkala's other works, as in his glass pieces, poetic investigations of nature, it is the water and the wood and the ice that take on form in objects, and are restored to nature like an offering.
NOTES
[1] Other large pieces represent Finland and its arts and crafts
in the Scandinavian Pavilion at the Fair Montreal: a survey of ceramic by Birger
Kaipiainen, a carpet by Uhra Simberg,
a relief glass by Timo Sarpaneva, an
embossed copper bas-relief by Laila Pullinen.
Network
Kenzo Tange for Tokyo—
An account the Japanese architect wrote soon after he finished the stadiums for the 1964 Olympic Games From the archive
Sydney Opera House—
On the final leg of a round-the-world trip in 1967, Charles Eames visited and photographed the site of Jørn Utzon's pre-legendary project From the archive
From the Archive