Main Library of Tampere City Library

Reima Pietilä designed Tampere's main library, nicknamed Metso ("capercaillie") for the shape of its roofline recalling the bird's wings, completing the building in 1986 late in a career defined by organic, irregular forms that resisted the orthogonal modernism of his contemporaries. Its interlocking curved volumes and varied ceiling heights create a sequence of distinct reading spaces rather than one uniform hall, an approach Pietilä had already explored at Kaleva Church two decades earlier.