Kari Juhani Jormakka (21 January 1959, in Helsinki – 13 January 2013, in Vienna) was a Finnish architect, historian, critic and pedagogue.

Background

Though born in Helsinki, Kari Jormakka's family soon afterwards moved to the city of Lappeenranta, where he spent his childhood. After finishing school in Lappeenranta, he initially studied philosophy at the University of Helsinki before switching to studying architecture at Helsinki University of Technology, graduating in 1985. He completed a PhD in architecture theory, with a thesis titled "Constructing Architecture", at Tampere University of Technology in 1992. Kari Jormakka's main theoretical position is characterized by studies in the ontology of architecture, defining the constructed nature of buildings as works of interpretation. As such a work may then be significantly determined by the period when it was created, a position that Jormakka critiqued through theories of Zeitgeist primarily associated with Friedrich Hegel and, in regard to modernist works, Arthur C. Danto. In "Eyes that do not see" (2011), the last published work during his lifetime, Jormakka applied these ideas to the theory of Functionalism best associated with the thinking of architect Le Corbusier and his fellow functionalists. At the time of his death Jormakka was Professor of Architecture Theory at Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria. Previously he taught at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, University of Illinois at Chicago, and Ohio State University, and was a visiting professor at Harvard University. In 2020 a Festschrift and Webfestschrift were published in honour of Kari Jormakka by the University of Tampere in Finland, titled "What, if anything, is a rabbit?", containing essays by over 20 of his former colleagues from the US, Finland, Germany and Austria.

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