Measured and drawn - Serlachius

The drawings were produced during the measurement camps organised in the late summer 2023. The buildings at Huhkojärvi farm, established in the 1920s by Gösta Serlachius, were designed by architects from the international Vernadoc network. In contrast, the buildings in Mänttä were documented by architecture students at the University of Tampere.

Vernadoc is a global network of architects who document the traditional building stock developed in local conditions through drawing. The network initiated by Finnish architect Markku Mattila includes more than a thousand architects from various countries and organises several measurement camps annually.

The measurement drawing has a long tradition

“Measurement drawings are needed, for example, when renovating an old building for which there are no original drawings. In fact, making them has been part of the architecture education in Finland for more than a hundred years,” says the curator of the exhibition, Milla Sinivuori-Hakanen, Senior Curator at Serlachius.

At the University of Tampere, architectural studies still include a course in measurement drawing, although this is no longer the case everywhere. In the autumn 2023, second-year architecture students spent a week measuring and studying buildings of different ages in Mänttä.

Various housing-related sites had been selected for the camp in Mänttä to be measured. The exhibition includes to the public accessible buildings that are familiar to the people of Mänttä, as well as private homes. The measurement drawings started during the camp week were finalised during the winter.

Huhkojärvi – the result of Serlachius’ ideal of beauty

In the summer 2023, an international group of twelve people architects camped at the Huhkojärvi farm. Over the course of two weeks, the architects measured the buildings and drew the drawings. The farm is located in Koskenpää, Jämsä, and is currently owned by the R. Erik and Bror Serlachius Foundation.

“The buildings in Huhkojärvi represent Gösta Serlachius’ ideal vision of Finnish national construction. Most of the buildings were designed by sculptor Hannes Autere together with architect W. G. Palmqvist,” says Milla Sinivuori-Hakanen.

The exhibition features a total of 65 drawings from 17 different objects. Each site is accompanied by a short introductory text, but no attempt is made to present the entire history of the buildings. All drawings are made in the traditional way on paper.

In the exhibition space, you can watch a video in which architects and architecture students work on measurement drawings and talk about their work.The measured and drawn will be on display at Serlachius Headquarters from 15 March 2025 to 1 March 2026.

The article was published in Serlachius’ customer magazine in the spring of 2025.

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