Sweltering late summer of 2004, Helsinki; four young architects are kicked out of a co-working space for being too loud, getting worked up about a museum competition in Kotka, Finland. Retiring to a nearby bar to continue the conversation, a decision is made to set up a practice where loudness is encouraged. Twenty years later ALA still works by combining quiet grinding with big ideas, and dialogue with digital craftsmanship.

This book brings together the firm's main built works and the thinking behind them. The highlighted projects include Kilden Performing Arts Centre, ALA's breakthrough project; Helsinki Central Library Oodi, one of the most important public libraries of the 21st century; and the friendly new face of Helsinki Airport.

ALA creates international architecture in the sense that it is not only designed for the local public, produced locally in that limited context, but from the start aims to attract global attention, communicate in the wider context of architectural production, and take part in global architecture culture.

The firm has a sensibility that is attentive to the locality of the project wherever it is geographically situated, and is able to not only use advanced technologies, varied material palettes, and structurally innovative designs, but to also enhance that location, add something specific to it.

ALA's buildings create places, dialogues, and encounters, whether those happen between people, people and buildings, or buildings and their surroundings.
Isokokoinen kirja, 297 x 230 mm.