Category Archives: News

Kiruna 2.0

Kiruna, the town in Northern Sweden that is slowly slipping into the ground has announced the closed competition list to redesign the city when it moves to it’s new location.

  • Design AIM (Helsingborg) and Onix Sweden AB (Helsingborg) with advisor / sub-consultants Noema Culture & Place Mapping (London), Atkins (Malmö) and Farawaysoclose / Apocalypse Labotek (Malmö).
  • Bjarke Ingels Group (Copenhagen), Spacescape (Stockholm), Testbedstudio (Stockholm), Topotek 1 & Man Made Land (Berlin) and Resource Vision (Stockholm).
  • BSK Architects AB (Stockholm), MVRDV (Rotterdam) and Grontmij in Sweden AB (Stockholm).
  • COBE Aps (Copenhagen) with advisers Kragh & Berglund (Copenhagen and Stockholm), Moe & Bread Farm (Rodovre), Yngve Andren Konsult AB (Stockholm) and Boris Broman Jensen (Aarhus).
  • Ecosistema Urban (Madrid), architect Kristine Jensen Tegnestue (Aarhus), 700N architecture AS (Tromsø), Lighting Architecture (Stockholm) and Atkins (Stockholm).
  • KCAP Architect & Planners (Rotterdam) and Case Studio (Gothenburg).
  • NorconsultByplan (Sandvika), Norconsult landscape architect (Sandvika), Fantastic Norway (Oslo) and the 0047 International AS (Oslo).
  • Tham and Videgård Architects (Stockholm), Territorial Agency (London) and a_zero environmental architects (London).
  • Tovatt Architects & Planners (Stockholm), Atelier Dreiseitl (Ueberlingen), Urban Think Tank Architects LLC (Zurich) and Wenanders (Stockholm).
  • White Architects AB (Stockholm), Ghilardi + Hellsten (Oslo), Spacescape (Stockholm), Vectura Consulting AB (Solna) and Evidence BLW AB (Stockholm)

Expect the result in March 2013.

See my original write up of Kiruna here.

Futuro 001

The first Futuro house ever made (of 100 and only 4 left in Finland) has just been bought by the WeeGee gallery in Espoo so it’s future is probably secure. Great news for this Finnish and Architectural icon. If you haven’t heard of the Futuro yet where have you been? It’s THE 60′s UFO house designed by Finnish Architect Matti Suuronen.

Guggenheim May Come to Helsinki

Yesterday Helsinki announced it has commissioned a study from the Guggenheim Foundation into the feasibility of opening a Guggenheim Museum in Helsinki. Of course it would raise the city profile and bring in money and tourism but it also strikes me as not something that will easily sit in the current art and design culture in Helsinki comfortably at all. However the McDonalds of High Art might be coming here soon. (via)

Libeskind in Tampere

click on image for slideshow

Daniel Libeskind has been chosen to design the new Tampere central arena, this follows on from his masterplanning of the arena and business park and commercial deck for the centre of Tampere which he had already made. Foreign Architects have really not had an easy time of building in Finland although some competitions have been won and schemes designed this will be the first foreign designed building of any sort of note in Finland since Stephen Holl’s Kiasma over ten years ago.

Its built over the railway and seems like a good piece of urban design with a twist of the style Libeskind is by now world famous for. Because the stadium is needed for the World Ice Hockey Championships in 2013 it is in everyone’s interests to get this built fast.

This also shows there is  a great deal of civic pride and ambition outside of the capitol also.

All photos form Daniel Libeskind Architects.

The Self Sufficient City Competition

The IAAC has a competition that’s free to enter to envisage the future city. If you are interested you can find out more about the competition  and register at advancedarchitecturecontest.org. Entries must be submitted by 29th September so you don’t have too much time.

The contest is open to architects, planners, designers and artists who want to contribute to progress in making the world more habitable by developing a proposal capable of responding to emerging challenges in areas such as ecology, information technology, socialization and globalization, with a view to enhancing the connected self-sufficiency of our cities.

Helsinki Biennale 2008

Helsinki Biennale 2008 is going to be a World Fair. We have secretly built pavillions and all that shit in the cellar of Design Museum Helsinki. The World Fair will take place 25.10.2008–25.1.2009. It will be noisy, magnificent, and über gigantic. More than 50 most interesting artists from Finland and over 100 of our favorite artists from abroad. If sleep is the new black, Helsinki Biennale 2008 is wearing all white!

Aki-Pekka Sinikoski, Head of Helsinki Biennale

Fortress Finland

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.

Links

Krepost Sveaborg – A great site to find out about the Helsinki Fortifications in particular.

HS has taken some photos (list) of how they are now – zoom out on the map to about 10km and you will see what I mean.

Finland for Thought there are some good comments here too.

hugovk has some good photos.

Aalto University

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 in Finland clearly think that for Finland economically the way ahead is with technology based design in different disciplines.

Apart form being forward thinking to take this attitude, its of course a little controversial, how influential will the economics department be on the artists so to speak, and how well can they or should they integrate? I think there is probably a deeper underlying trend also and that is not only design as a key economic leader but that design and high technology are more and more integrated subconsciously into our daily lives and this is a common theme universally across disciplines.

Going, going, gone.

In the last ten years nearly 200,000 Britons have emigrated away from the UK (including me!). I guess most of them have gone to the English speaking new world somewhere , but where should they have gone?  Of course the answer is Iceland which is currently first in the UN index of human development making them the happiest people on earth. Finland is 11th just ahead of the USA at 12 and the UK at 16. But why Iceland, personally the weather would put me off, but quoting this guardian article there are some pretty strong reasons for making the case for Iceland;

It is the country with the sixth highest GDP per ca pita in the world; where people buy the most books; where life expectancy for men is the highest in the world, and not far behind for women; it’s the only country in Nato with no armed forces (they were banned 700 years ago); the highest ratio of mobile telephones to population; the fastest-expanding banking system in the world; rocketing export business; crystal-pure air; hot water delivered to all Icelandic households straight from the earth’s volcanic bowels; and so on and so forth.

So there you go plenty of reasons to move if you need them!