(b Finland, 1927). Finnish architect. He was prominent from the 1950s until the late 1970s as an advocate of simple, volumetric design, which invariably relied upon the inexpensive materials and structures appropriate in a period of austerity. He was sometimes considered to be the leading Finnish exponent of BRUTALISM, but his designs are characterized chiefly by an elegant formalism that lightened the necessary reliance on basic materials. Lappo became known internationally in 1957 as the designer of the exhibition New Architecture in Finland, shown in London. His early buildings include a military canteen and cinema facilities (1958–9), Kouvala, with an expressive timber-trussed roof. The Annexe Building (1959), at the School for Non-Commissioned Officers, Lappeenranta, utilized convincingly detailed red-brick construction, a concrete roof and articulated entrance ways, and this basic definition was repeated at Finnish Army schemes at Kajaani and Säkylä in 1968–74. Swimming baths at Espoo (1969) and Leppavaara (1969) and school buildings at Sylvaa (1973) and Nokia (1979) consolidated his functional approach. His important IBM Office Building (phase I, 1979; phase II, 1987), Helsinki, with its tall, glazed central space, reveals that Lappo’s logical design approach, influenced by Viljo Revell and Heikki Sirén, retained its consistency and inherent validity at a time when the revisionism of the 1970s and 1980s led many of his contemporaries to abandon the integrity of their design standpoint. In 1978 he was awarded the State Prize in Architecture.