Riitta Nikula’s father, a lawyer and architecture enthusiast, led her to investigate the built environment. As a school girl she dreamt of becoming an architect, but learning about the reality of design work already dispelled the allure of Helsinki University of Technology when she was at upper-secondary school. Nevertheless Nikula did not stray too far.

– I matriculated at Munkkiniemen Yhteiskoulu in 1962. That same autumn I enrolled at the University of Turku, where I studied aesthetics, psychology and ethnology for one year. In addition I went to drawing school.

Even then, she had found herself enchanted by art history during the lectures of Åbo Akademi University Professor Lars-Ivar Ringbom.

The next year her family moved back to Helsinki, and she began to study art history at the University of Helsinki under the tutelage of Professor Lars Pettersson. The studies she had begun in Turku formed an excellent combination of minor subjects.

Completing a PhD was not a conscious decision for Nikula. She considered her licentiate thesis a continuation of her master’s degree. The reason for going on to a PhD was simply that the questions of 1920s urban development broadened and the problematic deepened. Nikula found two districts of Helsinki, Etu-Töölö and Uusi Vallila, through which the ideals of early 20th century urban development seemed to be naturally reflected.

– When I was doing my doctoral research, I was worried that I might have strayed from art history too far into urban studies. My supervisor, Lars Pettersson, nevertheless told me to “Just go ahead.”

In the Helsinki districts of Uusi Vallila and Etu-Töölö, the 1920s ideal of a uniform cityscape was realised in its purest form. In a city block in Vallila designed by Armas Lindgren and Bertel Liljequist, the residents of 555 small apartments are delighted by a large, park-like, shared garden. Construction of the city block began in 1917 as residential apartments for workers of the Kone corporation and Silta Oy. Of the apartment blocks framing Temppeliaukio square in Etu-Töölö, the most handsome are dignified in appearance. The high walls in the Töölö blocks roughly divide the garden into segments relating to each individual building. The following two photos were taken by Riitta Nikula.

To her surprise, Professor Nikula’s licentiate thesis received a distinction, which entitled it to be presented directly as a doctoral dissertation.

– Thanks to the urban scholar and legend of social history Sven-Erik Åström and the second inspector of my doctoral dissertation, Henrik Lilius, my doctoral dissertation was published in The Finnish Society of Science and Letters prestigious publication series Bidrag till kännedom av Finlands Natur och folk (‘A contribution to the knowledge of Finland's nature and people’).

Nikula had already participated in the debate on the protection of buildings in the 1970s but had experienced suspicion as to her expertise. After completing a PhD, the situation changed: she began to be invited to give seminar lecturers and join working groups as an expert member.

Her research career has taken Nikula all around the world and led to various working briefs. At the Museum of Finnish Architecture, it was rewarding, even exhilarating, to collaborate with architects and other scholars of art history. Exhibitions, and even large tomes, were produced on the basis of both her own research and that of changing working groups. Many exhibitions toured the world for years, in connection with which presentations were often requested.

Alongside museum work and her own research, even as a docent Nikula led two Academy of Finland research projects, supervised doctoral dissertations and worked as an inspector, supervisor and opponent for doctoral dissertations and as a referee of academic articles.

Doctoral education accounted for a large share of Riitta Nikula’s work during her professorial years when in 1999 the national doctoral school provided new opportunities for collaboration between foreign experts and every Finnish university researching art history. It was only in the 1990s that a PhD in the humanities began to be seen, as it is internationally, as a normal increase in one’s level of expertise.

– I have done work here and there; the main thing has been a good scholarly life. It has been a joy to teach and help students of art history onto their own research paths. Talented students actually taught their teacher.”