Timo Penttilä

Timo Jussi Penttilä
Planning Helsinki City Theatre in 1964: from the left, Jukka Siivola, Pekka Salminen and Timo Penttilä
Born	(1931-03-16)16 March 1931 Tampere, Finland
Died	25 February 2011 (2011-02-26) (aged 79) Helsinki
Nationality	Finnish
Occupation	Architect
Practice	Arkkitehtitoimisto Timo Penttilä
Buildings	Helsinki City Theatre Sampola House, Tampere Hanasaari power station, Helsinki

Timo Jussi Penttilä (16 March 1931 – 25 February 2011) was one of Finland's most important modernist architects and was for over 15 years a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in Austria. He is most renowned for the design of the Helsinki City Theatre (1961–67).

Timo Jussi Penttilä was born 16 March 1931 in Tampere to Arvo Mikko Penttilä and Ester Elviira Matinheimo. His father was agronomist and acted as a supervisor improving cattle in the country. Penttilä graduated from Tampere secondary school in 1950 and went on to study architecture at Helsinki University of Technology, graduating in 1956.

In 1957–1959 he worked for architect Aarne Ervi before founding his own office. His breakthrough work was Sampola House, the Tampere Adult Education Centre, which Penttilä designed together with Kari Virta in 1958 and which was completed in 1960. The following year, at the age of 30, Penttilä won the architecture competition for the design of the Helsinki City Theatre, a work which when completed in 1967 received much critical acclaim. The building is an example of Penttilä's soft, human-centric Modernism which has similarities to the mature works of Finland’s most well-known architect, Alvar Aalto; indeed the building is often mistakenly assumed to be an Aalto design.

The Helsinki City Theatre has remained Penttilä’s most renowned work, but among his other building designs the best known are the Ratina Stadium in Tampere (1965) the Hanasaari B power station in Helsinki (1974), the Salmisaari power station (with Kari Lind and Heikki Saarela) in Helsinki (1985). During his career, Penttilä was criticized within the Finnish architectural profession for following uncompromisingly the modernist desire for experimentation and for defending the autonomy of architecture. Penttilä was director of the Museum of Finnish Architecture in 1976–1980, and was a frequent contributor to the Finnish Architecture Review (Arkkitehti) from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, writing a number of polemical articles about architecture and the profession. An exhibition of his works was held at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London in 1980.