OOPEAA (Office for Peripheral Architecture), a young studio founded in 2014, has rapidly risen to the top of the global architecture scene under the leadership of its director, Anssi Lassila. Lassila honed his skills for more than a decade in various design groups and partnerships. Since 1999, when he won his first competition, he has been winning awards almost every year.

In 2014, he was nominated for the prestigious Mies van der Rohe Award for the Riihi house. For the eight-story wooden apartment block Puukuokka, which he completed in 2014 in the city of Jyväskylä, he received the main Finnish architecture award Finlandia and the Finnish Wood Prize, and was also named “Resident Act of the Year 2015” award, presented by the Finnish Residents’ Association.

He regularly exhibits around the world, including at the Venice Architecture Biennale, where he will be presenting his work for the fourth time this year in the Finnish pavilion, this time with four projects. In 2015, he was a member of the jury for the largest competition in Finnish history, for the Guggenheim Museum in Helsinki, and chairman of the Alvar Aalto 2015 symposium.