Sami Rintala (Born 18.09.1969; Helsinki, Finland). He is an architect and an artist, with a long merit list after finishing his architecture studies in Helsinki, Finland, in 1999. He established the architecture office, Casagrande & Rintala, in 1998, which produced a series of acknowledged architectural installations around the world during the next five years until 2003. These works combine architecture with critical thinking of society, nature and the real tasks of an architect, all within a cross-over art field using space, light, materials and the human body as tools of expression.
Rintala had his first wider recognition in 1999 with the project Landscape, where three abandoned wooden barns were raised 10 meters high.
In Venice Biennale 2000, Sixty Minute Man was realized; A ship sailed to Arsenal with a garden inside. The park was planted on sixty minutes of human waste from the city of Venice, becoming together with the old boat a three-dimensional collage.
In 2008, Rintala started a new architecture office with Icelandic architect Dagur Eggertsson, called Rintala Eggertsson Architects. The office is based in Oslo, South Norway and Bodø, North Norway.
An important part of Rintala’s work is teaching and lecturing in various art and architecture universities. Teaching usually takes place in such workshops where the students often are challenged to participate in the shaping of the human environment in a realistic 1:1 situation.
