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Professor Juhani Katainen, Chairman of Tampere University of Technology's School of Architecture guides student winners

More than 1,600 students from 130 universities in 20 countries entered the 1997 Student Benedictus Award, which challenges students to incorporate laminated glass into their design projects. To ensure objectivity, the countries of origin were not identified during the judging.

Professor Juhani Katainen, Chairman of Tampere University of Technology's School of Architecture

All the more astonishing, then, that one of the two joint first prize winners was not only from Finland but also shared the same school and professor advisor as the past three Benedictus Student prize winners (1994, 1995 and 1996).

Juhani Katainen, Chairman of Tampere University of Technology's School of Architecture and Head of the University's Design Institute, is the student advisor who has now beaten all odds to win the DuPont Student Benedictus four times in a row. In addition to being Department Chairman, Professor Katainen is a successful and respected Helsinki architect with a portfolio that includes several universities and public buildings.

Professor Katainen attributes his students' success in the area of international competitions to an uncomplicated teaching philosophy. "The primary method we use is to try not to prevent students from doing good work," he noted. "We help students understand that it's possible for them to create a good competition entry, guide them when necessary to keep the project moving along and then watch the results of their efforts. Of course, you must first start with good students," he added.

"The projects set for the DuPont Benedictus student competition have been very stimulating – the Sydney Visitors' Center; the cultural center to replace a Japanese Shinto Shrine and this year's Embassy design, for example – and have really motivated our students, who work on the Benedictus as part of their final year theses. We actually organized a student trip to Japan to study ancient and modern architecture the year the competition was organized around a Shinto Shrine! I believe that the Benedictus challenge has helped our students learn to conceptualize projects with vision and flexibility, using modern materials.

Professor Katainen continued: "Glass has a lot to offer today's architects, particularly in terms of transparency and protection. We recently took the students to a laminated glass factory here in Tampere and they were interested to see today's sophisticated laminating technology."

It is possible that the Finnish entrants to the Student Benedictus Award were influenced by the strong presence of glass in the architecture of their home country. With its short winter days, Finnish architecture increasingly involves glass in order to bring as much daylight into peoples' lives as possible.

Professor Katainen continued: "I believe that the main architectural trend of the next century will be for transparency and lightness. Most of today's existing architecture literally weighs too much! Our buildings need to be lighter and yet well insulated against climate, temperature and noise. Laminated glass fulfills these requirements very well."

"As well as safety and security, our students are also interested in the more 'futuristic' benefits of laminated glass – like the possibilities to heat a building via heating systems within the PVB interlayer and making glass darker when needed, for example in making the glass walls of a meeting room opaque during the meeting. Glass is one of the most elementary subjects but laminated glass has given rise to a variety of sophisticated applications at reasonable prices – good reasons why we believe it will be increasingly used in the architecture of the 21^st century!"