Architecture

VILLA DÜLL
Location: Goßmannsdorf, Germany
Client: Private
Status: Commission 2025, design ongoing
Program: Renovation of an existing historic building without straight lines or planes
Use: Residential single-family house
Size: 95 m2 (building)
Site area: 95 m2
Gross floor area: 95,00 m2
Floor area: 180,00 m2
Materials: Massive stone, red brick, timber construction
Team:
Architect Juhani Karanka / FINGERARCHITECTURE
Dipl.-Ing. Daniel Dahinten, structural engineering / TRAGRAUM Ingenieure PartmbB
Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Hans Pezenka, surveying practice / ALPHA-Vermessung

LE CABANON
Location: Heidingsfeld, Würzburg, Germany
Client: Private
Status: Commission, design, completed 2025
Program: Renovation of an existing building with an apartment and garage from 1963-1964
Use: One-room apartment with a new kitchen and renewed bathroom
Size: 37 m2 (building) + 37 m2 (garage)
Site area: 2000 m2
Gross floor area: 36,79 m2
Floor area: 28,47 m2
Materials: Terazzo, linoleum, ceramic tiles, wood
Design: Juhani Karanka / FINGERARCHITECTURE

LE CABANON is a delicate renovation project aimed at upgrading an existing building from 1963-1964 to modern standards of living. The original one-room apartment is above a garage, and has still most of the 60's materials and details intact. The renovation will include adding a new kichen, renewing the existing bathroom and interior surfaces while keeping as much as possible of the original materials and details in place. This approach is important, as the client has dementia, and his memories are dependable on these objects. Interestingly enough, we can save and reuse most of the existing, and only renew the basic technical installations and some of the surfaces that simplz have come to the end of their lifecycle.

LE CABANON is inspired by a small, minimalist cabin designed by Le Corbusier in 1951. Located in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin on the French Riviera, it served as Le Corbusier's personal retreat and is considered to be a forerunner to the "tiny house" movement.

AINO
Location: Helsinki, Finland
Client: SAFA - Finnish Association of Architects
Status: Concept and competition proposal 2024
Program: Ideas competition for a new museum of architecture and design
Use: Museum
Size: 10 000 m2
Site area: 10 000 m2
Gross floor area: 10 000 m2
Floor area: 10 000 m2
Materials: Timber construction with ceramic façades
Team: Juhani Karanka / FINGERARCHITECTURE + Tobias Hensel + Martin Kuntz + Daniel Dahinten + Yvonne Beck

AINO - our full-timber building entry to the international architecture competition for Finland’s New Museum of Architecture and Design to Helsinki. Out of 624 proposals, we made it high up to the Upper Middle Category placed at 127 with our cheeky Bird Plan and Egg Bar. The Jury especially appreciated our “City concept and architecture with character”. Congratulations to the winning entry “Kumma” by JKMM Architects. Well done!

Thank you for our little team; Yvonne Beck, Daniel Dahinten, Tobias Hensel and Martin Kuntz, for playing the game of form follows fun! Let’s pop open a bottle of champagne to celebrate this nice 9/11 event!

VILLA RIEDMILLER
Location: Würzburg, Germany
Clients: Private & PolarLifeHaus
Status: Commission 2021, building permission 2021, under construction 2022-2023, completed 2023
Program: Single-family house
Use: 4 rooms + kitchen + sauna
Size: 247 m2 (building) + 36 m2 (carport) + 43 m2 (Kleinwohnhaus)
Site area: 987 m2
Gross floor area: 247 m2
Floor area: m2
Materials: Wood + concrete
Architect: Juhani Karanka SAFA / FINGERARCHITECTURE
Team: In partnership with Johannes Arndt / baubüro Arndt2

Villa Riedmiller is located on a steep hillside facing a beautiful panorama of the valley below. A tiny post-war house from 1959 is still standing on the plot and it will preserved as part of the site history and culture. Now the descendants of the original family decided to have a single-family house designed in Nordic Style and to be built out of Finnish wood. The new Villa Riedmiller follows the frontline of the original Kleinwohnhaus and the ground floor is planned on the same level in respect to the silent knowledge of earlier builder generations. The new building will be constructed of massive wood from Finland, and the roof will covered with 157 m2 of green in order to compensate for the ground area lost by construction.

Villa Lusi is located by Lake Vanajavesi, Finland. The family purchased an old settlement building that used to function as a summer holiday camp for girls. Over time they have renewed and renovated with love and care the 1960s building as their lakeside vacation villa with a sauna right by the water. Now the owners wished for further renovations inside the main building, extensive outdoor terraces and a new garage. All the buildings are made out of wood, and most of the renovation and construction work is done by the family themselves.

Villa Leonard is a co-created architecture project to design new additions (Modules) to an existing 1960s single-family house. The basic concept is to imagine the House as a Mothership to which all the new Modules dock in various ways. The challenges are multitude: How to design in various microcontexts using massive pre-cut wood, and at the same time take into account the balance between old and new parts that form the new entity without loosing the beauty of the original House. The Modules include Papillon (Butterfly) as the childrens playroom, Diner with an all-around window & skylight, Bibliothek (Library) with a 180° view to the garden and Gartenhaus (Nest) as a creative space for writing. The Garage is designed as a sidekick to the House and Modules: Out of wood, low in scale and all façades in green colour.

KOLO (Hole in Finnish) is an experimental prototype for a Hell Hot Balcony Sauna for two Saunanauts. This Tiny Sauna is made out of wood from Finland and transported to Germany as a space filler at the back of transport truck carrying a bigger pre-fabricated log house. The door, windows, benches, and details are selfmade on site to give individual character to the final look. The stove is electric (230V), and it can be plug-and-played to a standard electric outlet. The prototype is a hybrid design combining high-tech, ready-made and DIY.

The Mühlenhof project is a design with complexity and contradiction. It is multilevelled housing inspired by the medieval buildings and their varied architectural styles, and totally modern apartments with open floor spaces allowing the users to decide on the usage of their own spaces. The apartments are on three levels, with the studio/shop/office on the ground floor, living, cooking, dining on the first floor and sleeping on the top floor. The individual apartments are housed behind two different styled white metal facades thus offering a play between form and function, views and windows as well as breaking up the logic of "reading" what's behind the face of the building.
Another level of design is related to the urban context. A brand new passage connection is opened throught the small inside courtyard between the frontside main street and a pictoresque backalley. This complex mix between public, semi-public, semi-private and private places is continued in front of all the entrances to the individual apartments as a stoep, where the inhabitants can place thier own green plants, benches, etc.

Town of Rottendorf arranged an architectural competition for the renewal of their railway station in 2015. After winning the competition, Jäcklein Architekten was comissioned to do the architectural designs for the renovation of the existing station and for a new multipurpose hall. The modern and minimalistic extension presents an exposed concrete facade imprinted with the image of the orginal Rottendorf locomotive towards the tracks. This composition between old and new will give identity to the station and town which is highly visible to the train travellers on the main line between Frankfurt and München.

This invited architectural competiton searched for a new building design housing medical services, offices and residential apartments to the city district of Hubland, Würzburg. Our proposal was based on contextual structuralism, where the medical services were located in a cross-shaped white glass building (Remedium), offices in a local muschelkalk-stone terraced building (Weinberg) and housing in wooden buildings (Holzvilette). The structured order of spaces provided plenty of flexibility for changes in user preferences while the references to local materials and landscapes of surrounding vineyards bound the new buildings to the Würzburgian genius loci.

LUX
Location: Pirkkala, Finland
Client: Kaija and Jorma Järvelä
Status: Commission 2010, building permission 2011, completed 2013
Program: Single-family house
Use: 4 rooms + kitchen + sauna + garage + storage
Size: 235 m2 (building) + 30 m2 (garage & storage)
Site area: 820 m2
Gross floor area: 235 m2 + 30 m2
Floor area: 186 m2
Materials: Lightweight concrete ingot (whitewashed) + Wood (painted white)
Architects: Juhani Karanka & Titta Tamminen (ArkkitehtuuriAteljee)

FOTONI
Location: Tampere, Finland
Client: Merja Jylhä-Pärssinen & Lasse Pärssinen
Status: Commission 2010, building permission 2010, completed 2012
Program: Single-family house designed and built to the Housing Fair 2012 in Tampere
Use: 4 rooms + kitchen + sauna + garage + storage
Size: 150 m2 (building) + 30 m2 (garage + storage)
Site area: 539 m2
Gross floor area: 150 m2
Floor area: 130 m2
Materials: Lightweight concrete ingot (whitewashed) + Wood (painted white)
Architects: Juhani Karanka & Titta Tamminen (ArkkitehtuuriAteljee)

MÄNTYLÄ HOUSE
Location: Tampere, Finland
Client: Tuukka Mäntylä
Status: Commission 2009, building permission 2009, completed 2011
Program: Single-family house
Use: 5 rooms + kitchen + sauna + garage + storage
Size: 239 m2 (building) + 30 m2 (garage + storage)
Site area: 741 m2
Gross floor area: 239 m2
Floor area: 182 m2
Materials: Lightweight concrete ingot (whitewashed) + Wood (painted white)
Architects: Juhani Karanka & Titta Tamminen (ArkkitehtuuriAteljee)

ARCUS
Location: Lempäälä, Finland
Client: Ulla Nieminen & Sami Kananoja
Status: Commission 2006, building permission 2007, completed 2011
Program: Single-family house
Use: 6 rooms + kitchen + sauna + garage + storage
Size: 250 m2 (building) + 83 m2 (garage + storage)
Site area: 4500 m2
Gross floor area: 208 m2
Floor area: 173,5 m2
Materials: Timber construction with curving walls
Architects: Juhani Karanka & Titta Tamminen (ArkkitehtuuriAteljee)

Following the flowing line of modern architecture, Arcus is build out of wood on site in a flexible way that relates its form and functions to the surrounding environment. The principles are simple: buildings height, width, materials, colours and details are done in a low-key expression through which the newcomer is "glued" to the nature and culture that already exists on the site. Only the buildings overall flowing form is something new that expresses the independence and age of Arcus.

SORJONEN HOUSE
Location: Pirkkala, Finland
Client: Elina & Kari Sorjonen
Status: Commission 2005, building permission 2006, completed 2008
Program: Single-family house
Use: 8 rooms + kitchen + sauna + garage + storage
Size: 416 m2 (building) + 82 m2 (garage + storage)
Site area: 8093 m2
Gross floor area: 498 m2
Floor area: 309 m2
Materials: Lightweight concrete ingot (whitewashed) + Wood (painted white)
Architects: Juhani Karanka & Titta Tamminen (ArkkitehtuuriAteljee)

SORJONEN HOUSE was designed for a family of four on a large forest plot. The family wished for a "small Finnish house", normally meaning something in the range of 120-200 m2. During the design process the program evolved to an ever growing project eventually becoming a "small" house of 500 m2. The overall concept and individual design solutions were inspired by the site and by the Italian landscapes and towns in Toscana. The floor plan design was inspired by icehockey goalkeeper's butterfly -style.

NOKI
Location: Helsinki, Finland
Client: Municipality Finance (Kuntarahoitus Oyj)
Status: Commission 2005, building permission 2005, completed 2006
Type: Renovation and extension to 1960s single-family house
Program: renovation of 1960s house + entrance + den with fireplace + bathroom + sauna + carport + storage
Materials: Timber construction
Site area: 1487 m2
Gross floor area: 372 m2
Floor area: sauna 25 m2, total 177 m2
Architects: Juhani Karanka & Titta Tamminen (ArkkitehtuuriAteljee)

VERSTA
Location: Hyvinkää, Finland
Client: Inkeri & Raimo Julkunen
Status: Commission 2003, building permission 2004, completed 2006, published Arkkitehtilehti 5/2008
Typology: Residential / Single-family house
Program: 3 rooms + kitchen + atelier + gallery + sauna
Size: 177 m2
Site area: 1005 m2
Gross floor area: 177 m2
Floor area: 143 m2 + ground floor cellar space 75,5 m2
Materials: Lightweight concrete ingot (whitewashed) + Wood (painted white)
Architects: Juhani Karanka & Titta Tamminen (ArkkitehtuuriAteljee)

The controversial wishes of the clients was to have a “tiny house” with airy rooms and with respect for their personal privacy while, at the same time, opening onto unrestricted views and direct access to the lush garden. The outcome of the design process was a house with four-cornered L-shaped floor plan situated in the northeastern corner of the site, thus leaving the original garden as intact as possible and making the best use of the natural daylight. The control over the views was achieved with the framing of the building itself - what you see is what you get!

From the very first sketch, our office's emphasis was on overall form instead of superfine details and exquisite materials. Above all, the form functions as a livable home with free-flowing interior spaces. There are surprising connections between living spaces and a much used shortcut across the outdoor terrace from the atelier to the living room and back. All these are enchanting charms in a building made out of ordinary concrete blocks and prefabricated slabs.

TAIPALE HOUSE
Location: Vantaa, Finland
Client: Kati Stoltz & Pekka Taipale
Status: Commission 2002, building permission 2002, completed 2008
Program: Single-family house
Use: 6 rooms + kitchen + sauna + carport
Size: 223 m2 (building) + 40 m2 (carport)
Site area: 1152 m2
Gross floor area: 223 m2
Floor area: 186 m2
Materials: Lightweight concrete ingot (whitewashed) + Wood (painted white)
Architects: Juhani Karanka & Titta Tamminen (ArkkitehtuuriAteljee)

TAIPALE HOUSE is a small house for a family of four designed with unique rooms, views, connections and outdoor areas. This house rests totally on steel columns that penetrate the soft ground all the way to the bedrock some 30 meters below. The complex floor plan offered a true challenge for figuring out the shape of the roof. Now the solution looks easy, but at the time it was really a puzzle to solve. Modern house inspired by the forms of a Jedi troop transporter.

ARVAJA HOUSE
Location: Tampere, Finland
Client: Minna & Mika Arvaja
Status: Commission 2000, building permission 2001, completed 2007
Program: Single-family house
Use: 8 rooms + kitchen + sauna + loggia
Size: 256 m2 (building) + 39 m2 (carport & storage)
Site area: 1309 m2
Gross floor area: 256 m2
Floor area: 191 m2
Materials: Lightweight concrete ingot (whitewashed) + Wood (painted in Oregon Pine colour)
Architects: Juhani Karanka & Titta Tamminen (ArkkitehtuuriAteljee)

ARVAJA HOUSE was designed for five persons and it was built by the family themselves. The inspiration for the floor plan came from the husband’s profession: ice hockey. Mika’s ice skates were lying on the drafting table during one ideas session, and suddenly everything just slid into the right place. We even placed a little round window to the tip of the shoe. This was the first time that the design work was conducted over the Internet, while the family was away in Germany for a year due to ice hockey. Upon their return, the family DIY the whole building. Impressive achievement! Classic urban villa inspired by the forms of Bauer iceskates.

PENTTI HOUSE consists of the main building and a separate sauna building by the lake. The family wished for an unique design made out of massive wood, and this idea hopped off the drawing table. The main building pivots around a skylight and a central fireplace with lakeside views, while the tiny sauna building has its own genre with straight, zig-zag and curving forms. The hand-drawn designs were interpreted to CAD & CAM by Honkatalot, which produced all the pre-cut massive wood parts and constructed the buildings according to the wishes of the family.

SALKOLAHTI HOUSE
Location: Kangasala, Finland
Client: Pia & Riku Salkolahti
Status: Commission 1999, building permission 2000, completed 2004, published 2004
Program: Single-family house
Use: 6 rooms + kitchen + sauna
Size: 217 m2 (building) + 41 m2 (garage & storage)
Site area: 990 m2
Gross floor area: 217 m2
Floor area: 162 m2
Materials: Lightweight concrete ingot (whitewashed) + Wood (painted white / Oregon Pine colour)
Architects: Juhani Karanka & Titta Tamminen (ArkkitehtuuriAteljee)
Prize: Best Building Project of the Year, Municipality of Kangasala, Finland. 2004.

SALKOLAHTI HOUSE was designed for four persons, and built by the family themselves. One of the architectural ideas was to play around with the "classic" archetype of a house, by kicking it in the corner in order to distort the conveyed image. It worked out surprisingly well. Only one corner was designed in an angle of 90°, but during the construction work it turned out to be an angle of 89°, which - luckily - made the family very happy. On this worksite, the best bricklayer ever, was the baker, who normally baked cakes in the village. Modern house inspired by the Stealth fighter.

This heart-shaped Wilderness Atelier was designed and built as an addition to an existing 18th century log cabin deep in the forest. Part of the original wood wall was rotten, so we decided to use this as the connection point between the old and new. The Atelier roof was constructed on three massive wood columns with a triangular skylight and long eaves to protect the free flowing walls. The on-site clay and hay was used as building materials for blocks that made up the walls, interior and exterior surfaces. And all the needed drawings for this project, including the building permission, was hand-drawn in ink on one single sheet of paper! Oh, those were the days!

Hertell Summer Residence. Ink drawing on plastic. This axonometric drawing in scale 1:50 was part of the building permission plans for additions to an existing summer house in Finland. The family dreamed of a tower and a fishtail-shaped bedroom with a bathroom to upgrade their old cabin by the lake. The additions and the renovation of the original cabin was built mainly out of local wood by a team of carpenters, smiths and copper roof makers. The romantic project turned out to be a lot of fun for all, and the family still uses the place as their summer home.

FLEXIBO
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Client: Nordic architecture student competition
Status: "Palladio i Norden" Competition 1985, honorary mention 1985, published 1985
Program: Single-family house
Use: 4 rooms + kitchen + sauna
Size: 120 m2 (building) + 20 m2 (storage)
Site area: imaginary
Gross floor area: 120 m2
Floor area: 110 m2
Materials: Wood (natural) + stone (insulated) + earth
Design: Juhani Karanka & Ahto Ollikainen
Publication: Ekelund, Christer. Palladio idag, Liber Förlag, Stockholm. 1985.

This tiny model (1:200) of Flexibo was submitted to the Palladio i Norden -competition in 1985. The competition brief asked for an affordable detached house for an unspecified site, suitable for mass production and/or prefabrication, inspired in one way or the other by the famous villas of Italian 16th century architect Andrea Palladio. Flexibo received a honorary mention for innovative ecological design and modern interpretation of Palladio’s architectural language. The concept for the required villa was turned upside down, embedding the small house underground and integrating it as a part of the surrounding landscape. It is interesting to reflect, what has happened since 1985.

WALL HOUSE
Location: Kangasala, Finland
Client: Tampere University of Technology & Kangasala Vocational School
Status: Competition First Prize 1985, building permission 1986, completed 1987, published 1987
Program: Single-family house
Use: 4 rooms + kitchen + sauna
Size: 142 m2 (building) + 30 m2 (storage)
Site area: 921 m2
Gross floor area: 142 m2
Floor area: 115 m2
Materials: Wood (natural gray / painted light gray) + red brick (whitewashed)
Design: Juhani Karanka
Special Contributions: Sculptor Mauno Kivioja, Artist Lauri Ahlgrén, Student of Architecture Matti Mastosalo
Publication: 3/1987 Tiili-magazine, Art-Print, Helsinki. 1987.

WALL HOUSE is based upon the winning entry to an architectural competition arranged at the Department of Architecture at the Tampere University of Technology. This experimental house was built out of wood and bricks in cooperation with the 16-year-old students of Kangasala Vocational School. The slowly curving massive brick wall was made by following two simple rules: “Please shuffle the bricks 20 mm in and out of the main line and avoid any regular brickwork patterns.”

Architecture

Villa Düll | Renovation | 2025- | Goßmannsdorf | GERMANY

Le Cabanon | Renovation | 2025 | Würzburg | GERMANY

AINO | International Architecture Competition for Finland's New Museum of Architecture and Design | 2024-2025 | Helsinki | FINLAND

Villa S | Feasibility Study | 2023-2024 | Würzburg | GERMANY

Villa Riedmiller | Single-family House | 2021-2023 | Würzburg | GERMANY

MOTEL ONE | Façade Competition | 2021 | Würzburg | GERMANY

Villa Lusi | Vacation House | 2020-2023 | Hattula | FINLAND

Villa Leonard | Extensions to a Single-family House | 2020-2023 | Würzburg | GERMANY

Sauna Kolo | Prototype | 2019-2023 | Würzburg | GERMANY

VERTIGO | Art Museum Competition | 2020 | Tampere | FINLAND

SCHEISS EGAL | Student Housing Competition | 2020 | Tampere | FINLAND

Mühlenhof | Residential Project | 2016-2021 | Würzburg | GERMANY

LOK - Bahnhof Rottendorf | Public Building | 2015-2023 | Rottendorf | GERMANY

Echter Quartier | Invited Competiton | 2019 | Würzburg | GERMANY

Sauna S1 | DIY-Sauna | 2017 | Würzburg | GERMANY

LUX | Single-family House | 2010-2013 | Pirkkala | FINLAND

Fotoni | Single-family House | 2010-2012 | Tampere | FINLAND

Mäntylä House | Single-family House | 2009-2011 | Tampere | FINLAND

DYFÄT | Summer Residence | 2007-2011 | Leppälahti | FINLAND

Arcus | Single-family House | 2006-2011 | Lempäälä | FINLAND

MEGARON | Marimekko Open Competition | 2006 | Lapland | FINLAND

Sorjonen House | Single-family House | 2005-2008 | Pirkkala | FINLAND

Noki | Tiny Sauna | 2005-2006 | Helsinki | FINLAND

VERSTA | Single-family House | 2003-2006 | Hyvinkää | FINLAND

Taipale House | Single-family House | 2002-2008 | Vantaa | FINLAND

Arvaja House | Single-family House | 2000-2007 | Tampere | FINLAND

Pentti House | Vacation House | 2000-2003 | Teisko | FINLAND

Salkolahti House | Single-family House | 1999-2004 | Kangasala | FINLAND

Vinokas | Wilderness Atelier | 1994-1995 | Lempäälä | FINLAND

Hertell | Summer Residence | 1993-1994 | Hämeenkyrö | FINLAND

Kaunis Veera | Open Architecture Competition | 1988 | Savo | FINLAND

Flexibo | Nordic Competition | 1985 | Stockholm | SWEDEN

Wall House | Single-family House | 1985-1987 | Kangasala | FINLAND