While many of Europe’s most famous houses of worship date back hundreds of
years or more, Finland’s Lakeuden Risti Church has become a major landmark in
just a handful of decades. Located in the town of Seinajoki, the Lutheran church was
designed by renowned Finnish architect Alvar Aalto, and built between 1957 and
1960. Yet despite being listed as a nationally significant heritage site, the church
has long struggled with an acoustically challenging environment that left
worshippers struggling to appreciate sermons until the recent application of Renkus-
Heinz beam steering expertise.
With a name that translates as “Cross of the Plains,” Lakeuden Risti Church is one
of Finland’s most recognizable houses of worship thanks to its 213-foot high, cross-
shaped bell tower. Inside the main building, 1,200 worshippers can be
accommodated in a 164-foot long sanctuary, with a high balcony and large pipe
organ to the rear. But while the interior is visually striking, the room’s shape
creates a natural echo and poor speech intelligibility. Over the years, attempts had
been made to improve the situation, with little success.
“For those worshippers who were seated at the rear of the church, it was hard to
understand what was being said,” recalls Juha Tupeli, property manager for the
church. “It was high time to resolve the problem.” To do so, the church contacted
Helsinki-based consultant Akukon. A number of potential systems were auditioned,
with comprehensive logging of the resulting speech intelligibility index (STI). At the
end of the process, the answer was clear. Audico Systems was asked to install a
simple but strikingly effective solution comprising two Iconyx IC24 steerable column
arrays, mounted in a left-right configuration at the front of the church.
“These very discreet, unobtrusive column speakers provide precisely the directivity
that the church required, and therefore the speech intelligibility it wanted to
achieve,” comments Audico Systems Sales Manager, Ilkka Hilden. “Lakeuden Risti
Church presented us with a very good example of what can be achieved even in a
difficult acoustic space. In a protected building, you can’t solve acoustic problems
by altering the structure – your only option is to find an effective technical solution.
I’m very glad that Lakeuden Risti Church found Renkus-Heinz Iconyx.”
“Our worshippers can now understand everything that is said during sermons, no
matter where they are seated,” agrees Tupeli. “A lot of people have come to the
church and told us that the results of this installation are beyond their
expectations.”
