Category Archives: Geolocated

Geo Finland

Yesterday Google updated their 3d buildings layer in google earth so that now downtown Helsinki is modelled. It all looks really good, but clearly some of the modelling was automated as there are plenty of building facades that are just the vegetation in front of the building. This should be cleared up in time though. [...]
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Laituri

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 [...]
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City Library

On Friday 29.02.2008 Anttinen Oiva Architects won the competition to build a city centre campus library for the University of Helsinki completion is slated as 2011-12. It looks pretty good to me. I Really like the dynamic facades using brick and glass, to match the materials of the street but also conform to the location [...]
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2nd Cycle

Artek and Tom Dixon have a new range / recycling strategy for their furniture. It’s called 2ndcycle and it is reselling used Artek furniture again. But in addition they add an RFID tag, this tag has information for access to a website which then gives the history of that item, when it was made where [...]
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Giant Moose

Storalgen has permission to build giant 45m high moose in Sweden to boost tourism. Check out the video, and look at the full story on Eikongraphia, then shake your head wondering briefly what the f### they were thinking of, and then go back to what you were doing.
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Otaniemi Expansion

A new island forms the centrepiece of an expansion of the Otaniemi campus of Helsinki university in Espoo. The competition won by NRT Architects is for office and teaching space for 1500 people with a further 700 residences. Its a major addition adn improvement to the campus which already contains some world class Architecture.
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Oslo Ski Jump Winner

The Oslo Ski Jump Competition Winner has been announced. JDS Architects based in Copenhagen won the international competition. It looks great and has a viewing platform at the top so you can get a little of the experience of making a jump yourself. Here is the article about it.(via)
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To Copenhagen

I am going to Copenhagen on an office trip in a few weeks time. Lots of Architectural sightseeing to do and maybe just walking round the city enjoying the atmosphere. So I’ve been doing a bit of research and have to say that CopenhagenX is easily the best Architectural website for any city I have [...]
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Espoo does Tango

In Finland few places make a worse case for Architecture or Urbanism as practised then Espoo City Centre. It was supposed to be a modern centre for the post war burgeoning metropolis of Espoo now the second biggest city on Finland. But lets be honest its an embarrassment really, an indictment of all that is [...]
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Arctic Seed Vault

On the Island of Spitzbergen in Svalbards, a remote archipelago 1000km from the NW coast of Norway a doomsday vault is being built. With over 3 million seeds the world seed bank projects aim is to protect the bio-diversity of the planet against natural or manmade disaster. It is managed by the Global Crop Development [...]
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Apartment on the water

YIT are building a development with apartment blocks that tentatively step over the water, the Architects are NRT. This is a first in Finland and it looks like a high quality development. As you can see its a quite suburban in character although so central, so it would be interesting to see the results of [...]
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Visit to Tampere

(excellent photo of centre of Tampere by vanikat) Last weekend we went to Tampere and I had a quick guided driving tour of the city at night although I couldn’t afford any time for a closer look. I like the feel of the city, it seems to be thriving and well worth a visit. Reima [...]
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I amsterdam

I love Amsterdam. I lived there for two years, and fell in love there. The city is a fantastic backdrop to life which contains wonders for anyone and everyone, from the cross eyed French teenagers stumbling out of their coffee shops we sometimes bumped into outside our front door to rich retired couples shopping for [...]
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Gazprom City Controversy

On the 1st December RMJM won the gazprom city competition in St.Petersburg. But an interesting development was that the Architects walked off the jury before the winner was announced. Norman Foster and Rafael Viñoly walked off the jury that chose RMJM’s designs for the massive Gazprom City development in St Petersburg. The two stars joined [...]
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WeeGee Opens

The WeeGee building once a printworks reopens today in Tapiola as an cultural centre it has five museums, a modern art gallery, a media-art centre, a museum shop and cafe. Originally designed by Aarno Ruusuvuori its a Finnish Constructivist classic and now houses Espoo city museum. There is a flash guide of the original building [...]
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When Do Ugly Buildings Make Great Architecture?

Reading about the recent coverage of the bienalle and more specifically on the talk ‘My kind of Town’ which included a discussion between Rem Koolhaus and Alain DeBotton on Architecture, PartIV quoted something DeBotton said and which was taken up by rob about ugliness; When at the end, he (A de B) said that he [...]
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