Magnus Schjerfbeck

24.07.1860, Pietarsaari - 08.05.1933, Helsinki

Magnus Schjerfbeck graduated from the Finnish Polytechnical Institute in 1881. He made his whole career at the National Board of Public Building, first as a temporary architect and later as chief architect until 1926.

His design work focussed on hospitals and schools. His work reflects the general trends of the architecture of his time. Up to the turn of the century his designs are characterized by the Neo-Renaissance as exemplified by the Deaconess Hospital and the Learned Societies building in Helsinki and the Normal Lyceum school in Tampere. His office duties included the design of a peculiar wooden building, the Langinkoski Imperial Fishing Lodge built in Kotka in 1889. The works designed at the beginning of the 20th century, such as the Nummela Sanatorium from 1903, have art nouveau features in their castle-like overall appearance and in the details, while the Tampere Hospital from 1909 tends towards classicism. One of Schjerfbeck’s late works is the red-brick Tampere Lyceum for Girls from 1924.