Roger Connah (born Chester England) is a writer, and independent scholar based in Ruthin, North Wales, and has taught for over three decades in Finland, India, Pakistan, Sweden, Canada, and the United States.
Connah has specialised in Finnish architecture and society, and has written numerous books on the subject, in particular on the life and works of architects Reima and Raili Pietilä and Alvar Aalto, as well as film director Aki Kaurismäki.
[2] In the competition, the best ideas, designs, descriptions, images, and videos for a new White House were selected by some of the world's most distinguished designers and critics and, during October 2008, were on display at the Storefront for Art and Architecture, which, in association with Control Group, sponsored the contest.
They stated that their submission was "an architectural folk-tale for the future, a hybrid representation using unusual poetics and a provocatively dislocated new media."
[3] However, Connah's position in regard to the history of Finnish architecture is seen as polemical because of his critical, questioning approach to what is regarded as the prevailing viewpoint among modernist Finnish architects that architecture is primarily determined by social not aesthetic issues – to the extent that during the 1960s and 1970s Finnish architects sought a non-aesthetic constructivist architecture: one such critic of Connah's position has been the academic Christer Bengs.