The Finnish Pavillion at the Shanghai World Expo in 2010 will be built to a design by JKMM. Called ‘Kirnu’ which I think translates as (milk?) churn. A somewhat understated iconic design with a really promising internal space that opens out to the sky. I quite like it but……
I wonder however how relevant expos are [...]
Open House Helsinki is on 02.10.2008 this year. A good Finnish and English programme also. Highlights for me look to be the visit to the ‘Bunkkeri’ and Lecture by Bjarke Ingels of (BIG).
When the Russians controlled Finland they built a nationwide network of fortifications. Afraid of a Barbarossa style attack and capture of the then Capitol St. Petersburg. Helsinki was also fortified although most of these fortifications were never used. Now much is destroyed or ignored, while some houses have old fortifications running through their gardens.
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Krepost Sveaborg [...]
Biologists have made a genetic map of Europe which as you can see roughly resembles Europe Geographically.
The map also identifies the existence of two genetic barriers within Europe. One is between the Finns (light blue, upper right) and other Europeans. It arose because the Finnish population was at one time very small and then expanded, [...]
The image above is of a tactile map made by the Inuit of parts of the coast of Greenland. It seems the Inuit mapped their territory by songs, legends and these tactile maps. It also shows how the empirical world of space as the empty side of a binary relationship with place is badly flawed.
The [...]
A great sketch of The Architects from Smack the pony (via). Maybe its a bit too close for comfort watching if you are an Architect or engineer!
Nightlands Nordic building by Christian Norberg-Schulz.
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A tip off from a reader of this blog sent me to this book for which I will be eternally grateful. First I should start with a warning you that this is not a coffee table publication, the pictures are sparse and in black and white. However if you [...]
Finnish Architects PES, have beaten 3XN from Denmark, von Gerkan, Marg und Partner (GMP) from Germany, M.A.O. from Japan and Architecture-Studio from France to the new Wuxi Opera House. The project should be completed by 2010, I guess they want it ready for the Shanghai World Expo in 2010.
The Finnish Pavillion at the 1900 Paris World Fair has been recreated digitally by the Media Lab at the University of Art and Design Helsinki (TaiK). The building was drawn by architects Eliel Saarinen, Herman Gesellius, and Armas Lindgren.
Wearing circular polarization glasses and using a mouse the visitor is able to access a space created [...]
The Aalto University has been created in Helsinki. Made up of the current Helsinki University of Technology, the Helsinki School of Economics and the University of Art and Design, its doors will open August of 2009. Its quite big news because of the groupings these represent. Design, Technology and Economics meaning that policy makers [...]
I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by. -Douglas Adams
If everything’s under control, you’re going too slow. -Mario Andretti
Juha Ilionen a Finnish Architect has a website of 31 proposals for the centre of Helsinki. Living room Helsinki is all in Finnish but covers a series of different interventions into the fabric of the centre to improve it and create or add to existing public space with a variety of functions. Some are larger [...]
The Norwegian Collection of Potential Architecture is beautiful idea about preserving and distributing the unrealised projects of Norweigian Architects. Like ruined Simulacra.
Archigram’s Walking Cities, Koolhaas’s Parc de la Villette, Mies van der Rohe’s Project for an Office Building in Friedrichstrasse in Berlin, Boullée’s Newton’s Cenotaph, Le Courbusier’s Contemporary City for Three Million Inhabitants and [...]
Helsinki City Planning Department has a new public exhibition space, cafe and forum in the Centre of Helsinki called Laituri on Narinka square. The city which really boomed once after WWII is changing again over the next few years drastically and there are massive plans being made. This is a place where they can be [...]
Every two years the Museum of Finnish Architecture (MFA) puts on an exhibition of the best 25 buildings by Finnish Architects over the previous two years. 0607 Started last week in Helsinki and is shortly opening in Paris in their Architecture centre also, but I have assembled a guide to each building in the [...]