Treasure, Trash and Planned Obsolescence

Abstract

As a fiction writer, I’m spoiled in the kind of research I undertake. While it is important work, it feels luxuriously aimless and self-indulgent, in part because I usually don’t know what I’m looking for unless I find it. This I’ll-know-it-when-I-see-it method allows for a lot of poking into random dark corners and rooting around in second-hand bookstores. Ideas for my debut novel, Your Presence Is Requested at Suvanto, first came from the stacks of old architecture books on my desk, picked up idly because I like black-and-white photos. Through them Finland began to appeal to me because, as I was discovering, Finnish architecture was so forward-thinking and so influential, especially during the first half of the twentieth century, the era I had in mind. Finnish design elements were linked to the landscape through natural materials and curving shapes that mimicked the coastline. This made me wonder how such buildings might affect the people living in them, which strikes me now as a novelist’s preoccupation.