Villas & Saunas in Finland presents 31 summer houses and 17 saunas that have been uniquely designed in the beautiful Finnish landscape. The selection represents the best of Finnish holiday home and sauna architecture of the 2000s: many of the projects have also been published in international architectural magazines. The villas and saunas have been selected by Harri Hautajärvi, Architect, D.Sc. and a long-term Editor-in-Chief of the Finnish Architectural Review.
Each project is richly illustrated both with photographs and diagrammatic architectural drawings. The projects are also backgrounded with the architects’ introductions to their architectural and technical solutions. Hautajärvi’s scholarly essay about Finnish summer house and sauna traditions and the architectural variations of Finnish summer cottages introduces foreign readers to the Finns’ peculiar relationship with summer cottaging.
The majority of Finns still have their roots in the countryside and with summer cottage culture also city children have become used to longing for the countryside and forests, and the shorelines of lakes and the sea. On the terrace of the summer villa, one can listen to the rustle of the leaves and birdsong. One can go swimming directly from the wood-heated shoreline sauna. The fire crackles comfortingly in the fireplace This is the Finnish dream.
— Harri Hautajärvi, Villas & Saunas in Finland, p. 10.
The book was first published in 2007, and this new, extended edition includes eight additional projects featuring energy saving and low emission solutions for holiday home construction. The first edition of Villas and Saunas in Finland was a long list nominee for the Sir Nikolaus Pevsner RIBA International Book Award for Architecture in 2007.