Finnish architect Anssi Lassila, founder of the 20-person firm OOPEAA/Office for Peripheral Architecture, in Helsinki, was only 4 years old when Aarne Ervi, known as a master of Modern architecture, died in 1977. But Lassila grew up admiring his predecessor’s work. “Even though Ervi was of a younger generation than Alvar Aalto, he worked with Aalto in the 1930s,” says Lassila, “and he had a strong influence on the functionalist style of architecture in Finland.”