The the three members of the Pre-Selection Jury and its Chair are appointed by the Executive Board of the Finnish Association of Architects. The Pre-selecton Jury proposes 3-5 candidates, among which the Juror selects the winner of the Prize. The members of the Pre-Selection Jury are appointed for two terms.
Chairperson of the Pre-selection Jury
Panu Savolainen PhD (b. 1983) is an architect and academic from Turku. Since 2020, he has worked as an assistant professor of architectural history and conservation at Aalto University in Helsinki.
Prior to his appointment, Savolainen held a number of industry roles, most recently at Livady. He has also held doctoral and post doc posts and worked as a lecturer at the University of Turku and at Åbo Akademi. Savolainen’s scholarly focus is medieval and 18th century archaeological history and building archaeology. His thesis (2017) examined 17th century concepts of private and public space.
Kuva: Jukka Granström
Anssi Lassila is the founder and director of OOPEAA Office for Peripheral Architecture and Professor of Practice in Architecture at Oulu University. His architecture combines sculptural form with skillful handling of materials and innovative techniques.
Placing the human being at the center, Lassila’s work is characterized by a strong interest in creating comprehensive design solutions to provide a framework for a balanced everyday life. He has a keen interest in exploring the potential of wood, with a broad experience spanning from building with hand carved logs to developing modular structural systems using CLT.
The work of Anssi Lassila has been recognized with some of the highest merits achievable both in Finland and internationally. OOPEAA works on a wide range of projects from churches and public buildings to housing and urban visions with an emphasis on social and ecological sustainability. The office is based in Seinäjoki and Helsinki, Finland.
Sofie Pelsmakers is Professor of Sustainable Housing Design and Director of the Tampere Institute for Advanced Study at Tampere University where she also (co-)chairs the Sustainable Housing Design research group (ASUTUT). Sofie trained as an architect in Belgium and the UK where she also obtained her PhD. She has been teaching sustainable architecture since 2001 in the UK, Denmark and now Finland; alongside this she was also a project architect until 2009 and until 2018 was a sustainability consultant in London.
Sofie’s passion is for advancing sustainable architecture and creating more sustainable living environments and new ways of living together and with nature, and how planetary well-being goes hand-in-hand with a better quality of life for all of us.
She takes her responsibility to educate the architects of tomorrow seriously as well as bridging the information gap between research and architectural practice, making her work accessible to a non-expert audience, influencing architecture policy, practice and education. These efforts are evidenced by publications such as ‘Designing for the Climate Emergency: A Guide for Architecture Students‘ and The Environmental Design Pocketbook, a comprehensive peer-reviewed book which distils environmental science, legislation and guidance into one easy to use source.
Miia-Liina Tommila runs Arkkitehdit Tommila, her own architectural practice, in Helsinki and is an active member of the Uusi Kaupunki collective. She is also a founding partner at Kaleidescope, a Norwegian-Finnish joint venture. Tommila graduated from the Bergen School of Architecture in 2011. The school’s influence is apparent in her dialogue-based and humane professional ethos and her design approach which foregrounds both environmental and social sustainability. Miia-Liina’s work as an architect involves strategy, urban planning and circular economy-informed building design.
Tommila’s designs have been included in a five-year review at Norway’s National Museum, appeared at the Finnish Architecture and Design Museum, chosen for the EXPO2100 research project and exhibition series and beem shown at a variety of exhibitions in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Italy. She has participated successfully in a number of design competitions, the latest of which is the Katrineberg sustainable village in Vantaa. Tommila Arkkitehdit’s design for the Arabia Culture Campus in Helsinki has been featured in a number of publications.
Miia-Liina Tommila is active in a number of industry bodies and associations and has sat on prize juries. She has served as a visiting lecturer at the Bergen School of Architecture and at the Metropolia University of Applied Sciences and she frequently gives talks in Finland and other Nordic countries. During her previous career as a classical musician, Miia-Liina Tommila was awarded the Fredrik Pacius prize.