In the countryside, the family sauna was usually to be found close to the farmhouse and close to the well. But, as increasing numbers of urban residents began acquiring villas and cottages as summer holiday retreats during the latter half of the 19th century, saunas began appearing on lakeshores….

It was during the war period that lakeside saunas became much more widespread. Soon, they began to take over from the bathhouses of the genteel folk, becoming so common that few people today even consider that they have not always been a central feature, and a delight, of the Finnish way of life. – YLE article

This is all consistent with the Sauna moving from being an integral part of life to a leisure activity.

I love buildings with order. I find chaotic buildings too close to my real nature. I am  an untidy human without a frame of reference. I’m like a bagperson. I get great pleasure in having a frame of reference that establishes what I can and cannot do. The zones developed by framing allow an ease of order yet can provide great flexibility. It’s like structure in music, an order which the composer will develop as layers of complexity that add richness within the established order. – Glenn Murcutt

The MFA in Helsinki currently is hosting an exhibition on the Australian Architect Glenn Murcutt. Architecture for Place shows off a selection of Murcutt’s projects through photos, drawings and models.

The drawings sometime blown up show all the stages of the design, ‘napkin’ sketches to working drawings. One of my favourite drawings is a page of sketchs and notes on a roof and details sent as a fax, dated and a ‘with love Glenn’ at the bottom. The models, all sectional have the sectional drawing attached to the back showing they are less concerned with an investigation of the spacial qualities of the building than of the way the materials are put together.(...)
Read the rest of Glenn Murcutt – Architecture for Place (436 words)

Farrell will look at four main points the government’s role in promoting design quality, the economic benefits of architecture, cultural heritage and the built environment and improving education about architecture and buildings. See the report in The Guardian and  BD. You can write comments about the review direct to Farrells office here:  FAR@terryfarrell.co.uk

The Terrainator by Dan Wilson is a service that prints a region of the world of your choice into a 3d model delivered to your door. You can do it all online and have it shipped to you for around $45. Not all areas on the globe are covered yet and I got some mixed results making maps of places I know in the UK, but the Alps and mountains of Scotland look great. As data is added both the areas covered should increase and the quality of the models will too.

I would love to see Dan add cities, imagine New York for example and even single buildings.

The city of Kiruna has announced the winner of the competition to effectively move the city away from the subsidence radiating from the iron mine which is slowly swallowing the old city. Kiruna 4-ever won by White Architects AB (Stockholm), Ghilardi + Hellsten (Oslo), Spacescape (Stockholm), Vectura Consulting AB (Solna) and Evidence BLW AB (Stockholm).

Because of what must be one of the largest mines in Europe Kiruna is the biggest energy consumer in Sweden coupled with a relatively extreme northerly climate the redesign of Kiruna is a big and interesting urban challenge. The winning proposal has at it’s heart in many ways the introduction of a cable car system to link the mine the new center and other key points of the city.

As for the future, your task is not to foresee it but to enable it.
- Antoine de Saint Exupéry

You can also save a list of favourites. It’s for IOS & android at the moment but it only has Aalto buildings in Helsinki. However the aim is to release updates to eventually include all Aalto buildings. (via)

This book was one of those pleasurable of reading experiences where my brain felt like it was being subtly rewired as I was reading it. I loved this book and what follows isn’t really a review but a summary with an awful lot of quotes. A set of notes for myself. I’ll try to make a faithful outline of what Strategic design is and what it might mean to the Architect without the examples that Dan gives. Also Strelka press should be congratulated on a nice series of e-books.

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Read the rest of Dark Matter and Trojan Horses: A Strategic Design Vocabulary by Dan Hill (1,663 words)

On the 4th of January last year I got an email from Maciej Ceglowski of Pinboard, giving me a year full archiving account. There had been a small glitch with a note I had saved the evening before, and by way of apology he upgraded my account to full archiving for a year. I had noticed something awry the night before but honestly had thought nothing of it so I was more than pleasantly surprised by his email.

Pinboard has kept slowly developing without changing character and now with a few recipies from ifttt I can tie many of the things I use day to day back to pinboard for easy archiving. For example all my items in pocket I’ve read and all my google reader starred items are automatically backed up to my pinboard account not to mention my tweets.

So while facebook goes from strength to strength and twitter mutates into a media company there are services like pinboard that provide proper proactive customer service. Unlike some others it doesn’t leverage your content, (which you signed away to them) because it provides you with a service you pay for yourself. So thank you Pinboard!

BACA Architects

An amphibious house is a building that rests on the ground on fixed foundations but, whenever a flood occurs, the entire building rises up in its dock and floats there, buoyed by the floodwater. The Local Authority and Environment Agency supported this proposal because it was a replacement dwelling so flood risk was reduced on this site. -BACA

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Read the rest of The Amphibious House (262 words)

Spend your money on the things money can buy. Spend your time on the things money can’t buy. — Haruki Murakami (via)

The event itself, a week or so into the new year, will involve little fuss, simply a few households moving into refurbished flats. But the symbolism is momentous: a rebirth for one of Britain’s most infamous housing estates and a half-century of turbulent social history coming full circle. (the Guardian)

Urban splash have after eight years managed to renovate some of the Brutalist masterpiece Park Hill. It looks like the second incarnation won’t have the social baggage of the first and therefore has a much better chance of being successful.

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.

Architecture is about the lack of stability and how to address it. Architecture is about the void and how to cross it. Architecture is about inhospitability and how to live within it.
Lebbeus Woods would have had it no other way, and—as students, writers, poets, novelists, filmmakers, or mere thinkers—neither should we. - Geoff Manaugh about Lebbeus Woods who passed away Yesterday

There are three categories of things: Fragile things that break, like the financial system; robust things that don’t break easily but don’t improve, like the Brooklyn Bridge; and my new category, antifragile things that gain strength from stressors and get stronger from failure, like evolution. The fundamental problem in foreign policy is that people shoot for stability rather than antifragility. -Nassim Nicholas Taleb

A series of twitters from Dan lead me to the article and quote above. Only wondering about whether applying antifragile ideas to human built systems   is a good idea given that Evolution the example stated above is the epitome of death, violence and extinction. Am eagerly awaiting his new book Antifragile to hear how things might fail well.

The digital revolution has spawned a new generation of small, agile and hyperactive publishers who, over the last decade, have profoundly transformed how architecture and design are broadcast, both in print and online.

I remember having a disagreement about what blogging and the internet meant to Architectural publishers with a no longer writing blogger a few years back. He thought basically that there would be no Architectural journals at all and a lot less published work full stop. I was extremely sceptical. For sure the landscape will change drastically but TV didn’t kill Radio and the Internet won’t kill the book or the journal. This article  shows that a new very interesting scene is emerging, and I think personally there will be a lot more to change in this space over the next few years, again from the Domus article,

What one finds today, therefore, is not that online formats seek to replace or supersede printed formats. Instead, the poly-vocal, movable and interactive capacity that is most amplified in online production is actually part of a wider change affecting both print publishing and architectural production itself.

I’m not going to write a long review but just a brief overview of this book with a few online references for following up by myself and anyone else interested.

Pompeii starts with the falling  pumice stone on the city of Pompeii on the 25th August 79CE. What book on Pompeii could start in any other way than to take you via the people trapped,  and forced to witness forever to us this human tragedy 2000 years ago? Their frozen bodies at once connect us to this city in a way the buried city buildings never will.  But after the introduction Mary Beard  leaves the statues of the dead respectfully behind to give anyone interested a run down on the city, and what it can and can’t tell us.

Miss Beard has a good way of writing, she can summarise complicated points well and make them easily digestible, and she tries not to get too carried away, but let the actual evidence contain her assumptions.

It’s wonderful to follow the speculation forinstance about the possible one way road system or try to imagine the stench of the street / open sewer system of the town. How many people could read? How many citizens and slaves? How did the local elections work? The architecture, paintings, everything is gone over in the search for information about Pompeii and the Roman world, and through it I found myself building up a much more detailed picture than I previously had before.

The sections on making a visit and further reading make this book more than a vivid capturing of the city into the first book you should read if you are going to visit the city.

Mary Beard since writing this has produced with the BBC quite a few films including one on Pompeii, it’s below with a few other links.

• bldgblog interview.
• Mary Beard writes a blog The Don’s Life.
• BBC programme on Pompeii with Mary Beard.
• Pompeii official site
• Pompeiana.org a site with alot of useful information

The first time I went I really liked the chapel from the inside, the outside shape I loved but wondered whether the cladding was a little too orange and wondered why the building was not bisymmetrical, the back  bow of the building is flatter than the front and I thought this was a little odd.

However passing it by a few times since I have decided I love the shape from all angles and the orange should both weather better in time and do better in the dark winter to come. Definitely one to visit.

To see why this is such a good idea go to the article written by Matthew. Then go donate.

Update: As of a few days ago they reached their target to buy the site but there are still some days to go and they need all the money they can get to get the museum up and running. (via)

Cafe and space for lectures, films, performances take up most of the space with a reading corner overflow. There are no walls to speak of only curtains and visiting on a beautiful sunny hot summer day I liked the way the spaces bleed out to the street. Maybe a pavilion here as a center for design related activities in the city could become an annual or biannual thing as the museums themselves don’t have good gathering spaces and this provides a very public realm with great flexibility.

The building is birch ply, steel plates and polycarbonate roofing. It succeeds well in providing a spacious and dynamic feeling space.

See my other photos of the pavilion on flickr.

The design team:

Students:

Markus Heinonen, Architecture Department
Marko Hämäläinen, Structures
Pyry Kantonen, Architecture Department
Janne Kivelä, Architecture Department
Wilhelmiina Kosonen, Interior Design Department
Inka Saini, Interior Design Department

Staff:
Pekka Heikkinen,Ransu Helenius, Risto Huttunen, Mikko Paakkanen, Karola Sahi

The Higgs boson appears in a theory first fleshed out in 1964 by Peter Higgs at Edinburgh University and five other physicists. Finding the particle proves there is an energy field that fills the vacuum of the observable universe. It plays the crucial role of giving mass to certain subatomic particles that are the building blocks of matter. (via)

Recently for the first time I went to visit a Futuro building. The Futuro is a prefabricated plastic flying saucer shaped house designed by Matti Suuronen in 1968 for use as a ski lodge. It wasn’t that successful at the time maybe only 60 being manufactured until it was canceled in 1973 in the face of the world oil crisis. However since then the Futuro has developed a status not just in Finnish design circles but globally and online.

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Read the rest of Looking to the Futuro (515 words)

If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.   Henry Ford

WikiHouse is an open source construction set. It’s aim is to allow anyone to design, download, and ‘print’ CNC- milled houses and components, which can be assembled with minimal formal skill or training. – WikiHouse

Since I wrote last about the proposition of the Guggenheim Museum coming to Helsinki a lot has happened. I had a good look at the background of the Guggenheim ventures since Bilbao, the type of museum envisaged and didn’t like what I saw. But also I didn’t really think it would happen, at a time of budget cuts and austerity I didn’t think that the city would have the financial muscle to build it. But I was wrong on a few fundamental assumptions.¹

For mainly those reasons the Guggenheim coming to Helsinki looks like a distinct possibility. So with the council about to vote on the subject in April it’s worth taking another look at the proposal on the table. Those of you who want a detailed look at the proposal can have a look at the official report here. OK so what will GHelsinki offer us lets check the for column.

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Read the rest of Guggenheim Revisited (1,014 words)

Photo by Tuomas Uusheimo (from ALA website)

Kilden is a concert hall and theatre by ALA Architects. It has just been finished and hit the newsstands and blogs. It is a major work for Finnish Architecture, and it looks amazing. Ark magazine features it in their first edition of 2012, along with an interview of the ALA partners with Bjarke Ingels with which at least some of them worked together at OMA from which I’ll quote from it if only to encourage you to order a copy.

lngels: Normally I would be very sceptical of something that is, even in your own words, so purely decorative as the premise of this building. But I think this actually accounts for a lot of your work. There’s a certain effortlessness, in this case it’s framed with a perfect diagonal cut and then there are some seemingly effortless light-hearted shapes… in Danish you would say suveræne, although ‘sovereign’ sounds weird in English. A single gesture that almost becomes undisputable, even though you can argue that it creates different entrances and pockets. But the relationship between what it does and exactly how is not that bureaucratic – in fact there’s nothing neurotic about it. It may also be Finnish sensibility: you can be really crude, basic and pragmatic in general but sometimes, if you’re going to party, you party hard.

Grönholm: Thanks for that, that’s beautifully said.

Ingels: I think that’s maybe what is unique about Aalto. Most of the time, he is quite a functional and rational modernist – really by the book. Then he has these moments of unapologetic poetry.

Grönholm: Suvereeni in Finnish.

Some more pictures in Domus.

Along its borders there are great oportunities for additional insertions, bars and cafes, small shops, markets etc, if someone gives it a sympathetic eye in the city planning department.

 
I really love this prefabricated, multi-modular Alpine lodge designed by Leapfactory. Dezeen has all the simply stunning photos.

With a lot less exposure than the Central Library competition but with much potential the city of Espoo has launched a competition for a masterplan of Finnoo-Kaitaa for 20,000 people. There has just previously been a masterplan report made (download pdf here ) by WSP Finland who won the Helsinki 2050 competition a few years back. This site has previous as it was featured in Europan 09 with a winning entry that caught my eye at the time. It would be centred between the harbour and as yet unconfirmed station on the west leg of the metro. The City of Espoo seems to be saying all the right things like trying to make this development carbon neutral by 2030. Could we see a properly urban plan enacted somewhere in Espoo soon? Go here for competition details.

So my first ebook reader a basic Kindle 4 came in the post  just as the first Kindle fire was being launched in the States. I had been thinking of getting one for a while but with the recent revised lineup bringing a nice design simplification and price drop of the basic model I decided to take the plunge now.  After a few weeks a weekend away and a Christmas break with it I think I have a good basic impression of the Kindle and the act of reading on one.

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Read the rest of The Kindle as the Endless book (888 words)

The answers Finland provides seem to run counter to just about everything America’s school reformers are trying to do.

Compare this with an article in the Guardian today US Schools with their own police.

More and more US schools have police patrolling the corridors. Pupils are being arrested for throwing paper planes and failing to pick up crumbs from the canteen floor. Why is the state criminalising normal childhood behaviour?

Having two kids in the Finnish system I’m not sure I agree completely with the ideological thrust of the Atlantic article or that the introduction of Police into some US schools is a cause rather than a symptom of US educational problems but I can say I’m nothing but impressed by what I’ve seen for my own children so far.

The Köppen-Geiger climate classification world map.

Danish Architects Lundgaard & Trandberg winning proposal for a ‘Living Harbour’ in the Telakkaranta area, Hietalahti docks, Helsinki. This is part of the old dock area which now is mostly empty and being rebuilt. This is the year that continued the small but growing trend that started I think in 2010 in which foreign Architects actually have a chance to build something here.

These days, when a building is constructed, there is less individual involvement. Take the old SPIEGEL building by Werner Kallmorgen. One can assume that (SPIEGEL founder) Rudolf Augstein saw this building as his personal statement. There was something at stake for him when he had it built. It was supposed to reflect the identity of the magazine. But, nowadays, a client is in a much more abstract and opaque situation. Money has become more important; a lot more people are involved. Nowadays, a building like this is mainly a development project. Take this building, for example: Its neighbor is its double. SPIEGEL (the German word for “mirror”) is mirroring itself. Of course, that introduces a personality crisis. And there always has to be an atrium! In its emptiness, it forms the actual substance of the generic city. – Koolhaas

Koolhaas is a good interviewer as witnessed in his latest book Project Japan, Metabolism Talks but he is also good interviewee as Der Spiegel show when they take him round Hafencity and the new Der Spiegel HQ building and have a few words with him. (via)

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo. Karl Marx 

Our idea is to offer an alternative to a discourse dominated by the likes of Engadget, Techcrunch, DPReview, Gizmodo et al. Sites like these cover products and services in unparalleled levels of technical detail and with respected in-depth knowledge. Yet they rarely discuss design in any meaningful way or the wider cultural impact of such things. Dan Hill

Dan Hill in the article Portable Cathedrals kicks off a new series in the Design of everyday technology with Domus. By looking at the Nokia N9 mobile phone, because of its UI and history it is a good place from which to start to investigate the current state of the design of things.

B.I.G. has won a limited competition for a new Ski resort in Levi in the North of Finland. With a skiable roof and a looping circular plan. Having been to a few Finnish ski resorts including Levi it will be nice to see something different than faux swiss chalet for a change. (via)

The Eames made structure and nature one. This is going green 1949 style, bitch. Believe that. — Ice Cube (via)

 So I just found out that Imre Makovecz the Hungarian Architect had died a few months ago. I wrote my first dissertation on him back in ’92 -´93. In the Summer of 1992 his office was one stop for me on my Eurorail tour. I went to his studio one day, looked round the office and talked to a few Architects there. Then I spent the next couple of days visiting Makovecz buildings.

At that time being  just at the beginning of my Architectural studies I found his buildings so refreshingly different. They are not just organic but highly anthropomorphic. Handcrafted within a national and religious folk art tradition but less from traditional Architecture even in Hungary. His designs seemingly bypassed 500 years of history.

But the highpoint of his fame outside of Hungary proved to be his Hungarian pavilion at the ’92 Seville expo. His designs relied on craftsmanship in a way that the modern world doesn’t. The economics of his buildings in a repressed communist Hungary made sense. In a capitalistic market economy Hungary started to become, the economics probably increasingly opposed his way of building. There was talk of a school design in Paris, and he came to the UK in the mid nineties and talked to Prince Charles but nothing came of these excursions.

At their best his buildings speak to us at a more primordial level. There is haunting beauty and charming naivety by turns. But his buildings always left me affected.

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A Helsinki based project called Tinkercad allows you to make 3d drawings which you can then 3d print directly online, all from your web browser. The concept is lovely, simple and integrated. (via)

I already wrote something about the new found ability of Finnish builders to build hi-rise timber framed buildings. But now we could make major updates to our existing building stock and develop new forms of prefabricated and highly insulated timber panel system also.

The student residence building of Pohjalankaleva in Oulu was the first project in Finland to be renovated with a Timber Based Element System or TES for short ( part of the International TES project). Already a second building renovation taking place following the pilot project is in Peltosaari, Riihimäki and hopefully should pave the way for this method of renovation to be taken up more widely which should in turn bring further time and cost benefits.

The best thing about this system is that it promises not just to bring your old building up to current building standards but far beyond. Passive House standards are being aimed for which in Finland that means the following;

In the project PEP – Promotion of European Passive houses, VTT suggested a definition for Finnish passive houses, where the requirements are:
Heating energy demand max. 20 – 30 kWh/m2
(depending on the location)
Air tightness of the building envelope n50 max. 0.6 1/h
Total primary energy consumption 130 – 140 kWh/m2 (via)

Maybe we can start to lead the building industry in the use of timber based construction methods to not only improve new builds but update our existing buildings without sacrificing cutting edge building standards.

• TES report (pdf) from the Helsinki University of Technology (HUT)
• TES manual (pdf) in English. Pretty definitive and probably good for insomnia too.

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.

• Anna-Maija Kuitunen wrote a thesis about it.
• Check out the Futuro pool on flickr and article in wikipedia.
• WeeGee news post

e3 in Berlin a 7-storey Timber Frame building.

Congratulations go to Sitra and HDL there for helping to reshape the fire regulations in Finland. Previously although Finnforest has a 5-storey office and there are some 3 to 4 storey buildings with wooden frames in Finland you couldn’t really go higher. But now the revision of the regulations has prompted SRV and Stora Enso to collaborate on building multi-storey buildings in Jätkäsaari with wooden structural frames.

This is a beautiful example of path dependence in Architecture. A good or bad decision which may at first have a small or marginal effect will, as other events knock on from this in turn amplify the effect until a large difference has been made. The revision of a few lines of text in a building code has in turn caused a timber building trial, which hopefully will in turn amplify out to wider building practice. It goes to show that the effort of creating great cities and places to live is not just about good urban planing, but good strategic design.

Hopefully we will soon see buildings to rival the seven-storey e3 building in Berlin going up all over Finland.

update: there is now a website to keep everyone updated about the project. Not to mention Facebook page and twitter feed.

Thanks for this brilliant review of what remain one of my favourite buildings also.
Just to play devils advocate for a minute a number of apparent contradictions you bring up in your review could be resolved by reading the building in Baudrillard’s Postmodern way.
Lloyd’s actually really is an oil rig or rather an insurance rig. It symbolises the Lloyds market much better that the clasisist buildings it replaces. The image of the old fashioned, insurance man or banker is actually the fake and the ‘oil rig’ the real Lloyds. It expands or contracts with the ravenous market it houses. Sometimes growing in good times when it hits seam of easy insurance money and sometimes almost engulfed by the waves of unforseen risk like a huge wave of asbestos litigation for example.
The insurance men living the lie of the stuffy responsible reliable middle age underwriter naturally rebel against this exposed reality and seek refuge in keeping their trinkets, a bell here, a dining room there, all struggling against the deep truth they can barely acknowledge…that this unsatiable market and indeed themselves are perfectly represented by Rogers’ design.

If a decision was made to build an undersea rail tunnel between the two cities, the price tag of that might be in the region of two to three billion euros (via)

Someone is still dreaming about this it seems.

Architects Tuomo Siitonen Architects

Finland rightly deserves attention today as a nation that treats its children as a precious resource and that honors the adults who make education their passion and their career. – Diane Ravitch in Ed Week

A good article with interesting comments ranging from the excellent to the downright racist. For the record as a father of two bringing up kids in Finland I have nothing but praise for the education system here at least in the early years.

…if a detached house here in Finland wanted to produce all of its electricity using solar power, an investment of some 6,000-7,000 euros would grant cost-free electricity usage for the entire household from that point onwards - Peter Lund from the Aalto University

So it may not be unreasonable here in Finland after all to have some significant solar power use.

The Arctic is one of man’s frontiers geopolitically, physically and psychologically. Recently the area has been the subject of renewed interest, as the icecaps melt it could be the place where new trade routes open up. Where oil and gas wealth are stored if only they could be exploited, where countries identify themselves and play the game of Risk in the real world. This book covers all these things and more.

It is a history of the Arctic covering its relationship to the Americas, Scandinavia and Russia Historically. It has a good section on global warming and what that means now and in the future for the region. It looks at the search and exploitation of oil and gas in the region, most interestingly by Norway and Russia. Most importantly for readers it links these strands together for the most part successfully.

The book started for me a little dryly but hit it’s bootstraps when Charles Emerson turned his attention to Russia and the old Soviet, and from there it didn’t look back. Recommended reading for anyone who might find these subjects interesting or who wants to explore an unknown frontier for themselves.

There are other eco cities much talked about at the moment Masdar city or Dongtan to name a couple off the top of my head but Hammarby Sjöstad, a redevelopment in Stockholm Sweden is not one of them. It started out as a redevelopment of an old, barely legal, and much contaminated industrial area, part of Stockholm’s 2004 Olympic bid and meant as a sustainable athletes village. They lost the Olympics to Athens but development of  Hammarby continued and now it has become a model for other ecological developments over the world. I visited it a few weeks ago and was really impressed.  Whereas Dongtan exists only on blogs and in the dreams of paddy fields, Hammarsby is very real. Whereas Masdar city pasted between golf clubs, and an International Airport is a future city in the making, it isn’t about sustainable living now so much as attracting development and business opportunities. Hammarby is about changing the city that you see when you look outside the window now.

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Read the rest of A Real Eco City of the Future (438 words)

An Apartment Building in an old block By DaM studio (via arch daily). I really like because of  its Metabolist leanings like something inspired by the Nagasin Capsule Tower. Strong forms and uncompromising materials, maybe a little uncompromising to the site.

Paris is in the grip of a post-it war:

Hostilities were first engaged on the gleaming facades of Montreuil office park, east of Paris, home to gaming giant Ubisoft and BNP-Paribas bank’s IT systems. The conflict has since spread to the business district of La Défense, and to the equally besuited enclave of Issy-les-Moulineaux, which houses France’s greatest concentration of telecoms and media companies. In fact, across the French capital, the summer has been enlivened by a corporate collage contest known as La guerre des Post-it (the Post-it wars).

Two questions spring to mind immediately, what is it about the French that they seem to be all born Situationists, and I wonder if the war could be spread to Leppävaara?

Of course a website has started in tribute to it. Postitwar.com. Here is a video also.

For fairness I’ll note that in this economic climate it might be the only realistic way to get the Guggenheim here.  I’m not totally opposed to the scheme but I stand by my earlier words, there are other alternatives that are better. The Didrichen could be approached, or even inviting the hermitage from St.Petersberg might be more interesting and relevant for the city.

Temola Winery

The most northerly wine in the world is produced in Olkiluoto in Finland¹ with the help of nuclear powered waste water. But what I find more interesting is that Finland actually has a small network of farms making their own wine from Finnish berries (Blackcurrent, Blueberry, Whitecurrent, Cloudberry). Who’d have guessed that there is a nascent wine industry here.

There are signs of a kind of underground renaissance in Finnish food but it’s two faced with the basic food industry mainly monopolised and industrialised. I wish we could get back to producing, and eating in a more natural and direct way.

• Map of Finnish Vineyards
• Vineyards in Finland Article (in Finnish)
• Temola (domestic berries)
• Kyttälä vineyard (vines)

1. according to wikipedia

• hermann wine (domestic berries)
• Viini-Pihamaa (domestic berries)
• Verla Winery (domestic berries)
• Extreme vineyards
• Finnish Winegrowers Association
• Valaam Monastery (domestic berries)
• Blaxsta Vineyard of Sweden

RH: This reminds me of something you said in a lecture at the Architectural Association: “If architecture can claim to solve problems, then it’s only logical that it can also be blamed.” So you can’t have it both ways.

WV: That’s right. You can’t say, “I can solve problems, but I’m not to blame if I cause a problem”, it’s impossible. If you can use a knife to cut a steak, you can also use a knife to stab someone. So it’s a choice you have to make, and it’s a funny philosophical choice that architects have never really made. For example, the whole discussion about Robin Hood Gardens, where even Zaha Hadid says, “this is important architecture and we have to save it”. I find this so puzzling, because all these visionary architects said that the architecture could not be blamed for the problems happening in Robin Hood Gardens. So if architecture cannot be blamed, then it also cannot be thanked. And therefore as an architect you can’t claim to create a social transformation through your own architecture.

RH: Robin Hood Gardens is an interesting example because the Smithson’s rhetoric was so community-oriented and so utopic, but one which has so radically mismatched the results. So is the lesson then for architects to just be more humble?

WV: I am seriously and deeply ambiguous about this whole question [laughs]. On the one hand, of course architects should be more humble, but on the other hand if they are humble, what good are they?

I’m all in favour of Prince Charles being able to express his opinion about subjects he cares about but that they should be in the public realm. Public policy should be made publicly, and Neutrality is a duty of Prince Charles not his protection.

A friend loaned this book to me and before I hand it back, long overdue, I thought I’d write a few things about it. I read it through once, at the beginning of my loan from cover to cover, then again coming back and dipping when the book happened to appear on my radar as it did from time to time.

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Read the rest of 101 Things I learned in Architecture School (244 words)

the war we can expect if the cold war will end. It is the war that will take life and power from the centre and give it over to left and to right, it is the war that will teach us our meaning -Norman Mailer

Cloud city by ALA Architects is a courtyard block infill scheme for a previously converted factory building in a prime location in Helsinki. The scheme consists of two separate elements, inside the courtyard is a curved mirrored metal box which reflects light back down into the original building while trying to remain as invisible as possible. Above is a set of delicate glass boxes which have been thoroughly thought through to add to the skyline. The scheme is very interesting for a number of reasons.

Firstly it’s the type of Architectural project we have grown used to seeing across Europe but not in Finland. It’s programme driven, speculative, not designed for the prefabricated industry, and doesn’t fit the loose architectural style we might call regional modernism. I’m not surprised that the client is a Dutch bank and not from the Finnish building industry directly. Also ALA should take much credit, they are amongst the most innovative offices anywhere at the moment.

Secondly it adresses the wider urban issue of increased density. If we should build cities more densly how should we add density to existing urban blocks?  Perhaps this is a workable and exciting solution for existing blocks which are office premises, if this is so in this instance then I hope the project will go ahead. I’ve heard that it has already drawn some opposition in the media, so let’s see what happens.

Production has started on Jussi Palva’s of Verstas Architects City Cottage. A summer cottage you can put in the country by the lake, or pretty much at the bottom of your garden. A smart, clever, compact and graceful design.

It might be worth pointing out a few things about the redesign though. Firstly its based on Scherzo by Leon Paternoster, go over there and check it out. It’s html5 and a responsive design try checking it out by resizing your browser, then look at it on your phone. Also it supports Internet Explorer with the respect it deserves, so try using ie8 or up.The redesign was prompted by a rethinking by me of my footprint on the web.

With the partial demise and rebirth of delicious and the current stagnation of flickr both services that got me into the social side of the web I have kind of rethought this webspace as the safest and only place to really put my non physical stuff. Mandy Brown summed up better than I could say about my attitude to how things are preserved on the web. Everything else then, twitter, facebook, whatever, is just a conduit, and a conduit that will close or monetise my stuff at some point in the future in a way I can’t accept.

So everything else from now on becomes a place through which I go. Everything that’s really mine stays here. That means that I’ve started a shadow site called hyper.lewism which is just my collection of things I do on the web whether it be bookmark, tweet or comment I want to keep or find a building or picture I like. lewism stays as it is mostly my thoughts about the built environment, hyper.lewism is a bunker and linkblog of everything else I’m interested on the web that’s mirrred back to me so I can keep it. We will see how it goes.

Anyway in the real world I have some major things to do to sort out our new house and I’ve been thinking about how we live in conjunction with that. So hacked from Saul Griffiths‘ talk & Jyri Engeströms‘ list here is a rough list of how I’m going to enjoy my summer a little better.

• Eat Less and More Healthily.
• Exercise More.
• Spend more time with my family.
• Live Closer together (in a philisophical way also).
• Breathe cleaner air.
• Drink cleaner water.
• Relax & Listen to some muisc.

BIG have won a competition to turn a waste incinerator power plant in Copenhagen into a ski slope. Also worth checking out because of the google earth model you can download from their site complete with skiboarders (you knew those dudes at BIG just wouldn’t be skiers right!)

update: it got cancelled.

update 2: it got uncancelled.

The World Bank has established a new Urbanisation Knowledge Platform that aims to become a global hub for urban knowledge exchange.

Hopefully not just a talking shop.

Was there one world-changing idea? Probably not. But the broad array of issues addressed — rethinking north-south corridor transit, introducing a MoMA P.S. 2 in Bethpage, repurposing infrastructure, designing more walkable neighborhoods — shows us that there is, of course, no single answer to building a better burb in the future. The range of solutions does point to a systems-thinking approach: one can’t consider housing without considering jobs, and transit, and smart growth, and so forth, and how they influence one another other within a whole.

A solid non-flashy social housing scheme by Collective Architecture in Motherwell. (via bd)

A dog walkers house. I think this graphic is by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, from the open house droog blog, awesome isn’t it! Looking at adapting the suburbs to new professions and uses.

This Graph says alot about why density is important in cities. I’m going to start posting some links and drawing together some analysis about the arguments for and against dense cities so this graph is exhibit 1 for the pro dense argument.

• graph reference; UNEP/GRID-Arendal, ‘Urban density and transport-related energy consumption’, UNEP/GRID-Arendal Maps and Graphics Library, 2008, <http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/urban-density-and-transport-related-energy-consumption> [Accessed 5 July 2011]

The art gallery Serlachius has just announced the reults of it’s international competition for a new gallery wing. MX_SI studio from Spain won with a really beautiful and tasteful entry. The results pdf is worth reading as there were quite a few good entries. I knew a few people who entered and they both put their buildings on the harder and more interesting side of the site but only one of the top entries is on that side.

• Results page & pdf

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Read the rest of Conformity and Experimentation in Architecture some notes (712 words)

In essence, we have been provided not only the means to be more free, but also to become new, to create and project a more perfect self to the world. As we become more reliant on these tools, they become more a part of our daily routine, and so we become more entrenched in this illusion. As Jean Baudrillard might have put it, this alternative world is “more real than the real.” (via)

Astute article about the Weinergate affair and why people get caught out on the internet. Of course the  ’perfect self’ is more akin to Baudrillards Hyperreal it may have more or less relationship to your true self (whatever that is).

Sous les pavés la plage -Anon (Graffiti on Wall Paris May ’68)

Update: and there is alot in Monocles weekly podcast about Helsinki, including an interview with Dan Hill of Sitra.

The dwellings in Ras Lanuf had to be big – an average 160 square metres. This is because there are no one-person households in Libya. The elderly and unmarried siblings live under the same roof with the nuclear family. The living rooms had to be big so that the men of the village would fit in to hold meetings. Women and children needed space of their own. When bathrooms were built it was important that the toilets did not point toward Mecca. -Pentti Murole

Our old company I know was involved in projects in Libya as well as other parts of Africa at that time, how much of it now rubble I don’t know.

Bingham is one of those postmodern characters – people who have rejected traditional norms and “family values” in favour of the professional exile of network society – that are traditionally portrayed as cruel robots, alienated servants, or pretentious jerks. Bingham is none of these: he is personable, reasonable, and kind. And he is enjoying himself.

Inmotion my favourite new cafe in Helsinki.

My reaction would be too long to unpack fully here, I see his point and agree with much but I have some big reservations too. Ruohlahti and Kamppi all qualify for at least a little praise, and the old Carl Ludwig Engel Church and Square is no less dropped from a helicopter (it would have to be a steampunk helicopter wouldn’t it!)  than the modern stuff he criticizes in the early 21st century! The key point the Glancey makes about places like Ruohlahti and Salmisaari for example in how they (fail to) meet the street and work as part of the city which is very valid, but does certainly not apply to Kamppi which is a great throbbing, living development…….however it looks kind of samey! Although Glancey is more right than he is wrong this kind of melange of Architectural criticism and place tourism is a little too breezy. Perhaps its just a problem when a critic is dropped in from a Helicopter.

1. This article is in Finnish and only a part of what appeared yesterday. I’ll add to it if HS take the rest down from behind their paywall!

“We do have a shot at building the best office building in the world,” Jobs told the Council members, “Architecture students will come here to see this.” Ideally Apple wants to move into the campus in 2015. (via)

For more than a month now, a “slow-motion landslide” near the New York/Vermont border has been dismantling a small town, day by day, square foot by square foot.

These are natural unlike the slow moving destruction at Kiruna.

We’re really not saying these are a ‘people without time’ or ‘outside time…Amondawa people, like any other people, can talk about events and sequences of event,….What we don’t find is a notion of time as being independent of the events which are occurring; they don’t have a notion of time which is something the events occur in.

Evidence for this includes that the people do not refer to their ages, but that they take different names at different stages of their lives or as they achieve different status within the community.

Other theorists are not so sure however. When a tribe with a limited vocabulary refers to things in the external world time might not be mapped onto it. In other words the Amondawa might well experience and understand time as we do, its just that it isn’t or can’t be articulated within the language…..(via)

The south Harbour right at the centre of Helsinki is subject of an open international design competition running until september of this year, see southharbour.fi. This is the most difficult, controversial area to develop in Finland at the moment. Most everyone agrees that it needs a major overhaul but what to do? Since the Herzog & DeMeuron hotel was cancelled last year the city has responded well to the critics and called for an open design competition. I’m looking forward to seeing some bold proposals.

The Bin Laden Compound a sizeable terrorist-modded urban villa has every chance to become a  dark tourist hotspot in Pakistan. A gallery and google map can be found of it  and of course the wikipedia page. The US military apparently built a full size mock-up to practice for the raid.

click on image for slideshow (photos by Michael Hansmeyer)

What method, what system, does an architect use to design a building? How are programmatic needs and context – with their degrees of freedom and constraints – translated into architectural design?

Regardless of their complexity, the tasks and decisions involved can be formalized as an algorithm. As such, algorithms provide a framework for articulating and defining both input data and procedures. This formalization can promote structure and coherency, while systemically maintaining full traceability of all input. – Michael Hansmeyer

Michael Hansmeyer an Architect and programmer who uses algorithms to explore Architectural form. I love a  recent project Subdivided Columns in which he not only visualised but built a scale model of one of the columns he  programmed by Algorithm. They seem to kind of gothic alien organic aesthetic which I think is great. Somehow it reminds me of the apprentice pillar in Rosslyn Chapel and touches on something which Mandelbrot showed, that although beyond humans direct ability to design,extremely complex iterated patterns are innate in nature just waiting to be used.

Amazon .com .uk

The basic premise of the book is simple, that people see and understand things and themselves by sight. That as seeing establishes our place in the world then how we see is important. But from these basic assertions a fast and near complete deconstruction of culture is embarked upon. That it deals so devastatingly with its subject matter reminded me of reading a high paced thriller.

Originally a four part television series for the BBC aired in 1972 this was subsequently made into a short book of essays that follows closely the series. Its uploaded here on You Tube and really worth watching, even before you read the rest of this review. It’s considered a foundational text if you are studying Art History and I would immediately recommend it to any Architectural student or practitioner. Actually I would recommend it to anyone because it is a seminal piece on how we attribute value and meaning in human affairs, and everyone should know how the whole sorry system really works.

The book consists of seven essays three of which are visual only. The essays make bold assertions backed up by forceful and cogent argument.

• The first essay argues that reproduction of a work of art has altered its relationship with the viewer and of that of the original also.
• The Second and Third Essay look at the female Nude…..that’s different from being naked by the way.
• Fourth and Fifth and Sixth Essays look at what oil painting depicted, for whom and why.
• The last essay on advertising and how they are similar to, and different from fine art.

The book is so full of well written insights and arguments it’s difficult to know where to start. But fair I think to say that part of the reason it is so well lauded is it blows the pompous arrogance of traditional value judgements of art out of the water. Forever.

Has it dated? Maybe a little and yes  it seems to be coming from that left-field of postwar Marxist criticism that now seems a little naive ? Well yes, but you’d be straw manning the book if you thought by bringing up the word ‘marxist’ you had undermined it’s arguments or conclusions in any way.

This book is one to read and enjoy and reweigh the arguments with for years to come. Read and enjoy.

Homage to Bachelard (1884-1962)

Architecture has at least two sides:  it’s a science;  and it’s one of the arts.  It’s akin to technology; and it’s akin to poetry.   This is why architects find Gaston Bachelard’s books interesting.  He was Professor of Philosophy of Science at the Sorbonne and the rational &  creative sides of his mind worked equally well.   He published about 9 books on philosophy of science, about 9 on the poetic imagination.  Believed:  ‘the masculine, workaday consciousness (animus), which strives towards scientific objectivity & the rectification of concepts, must be complemented by the nocturnal, feminine consciousness (anima) which seeks poetic subjectivity, reverie, imagination.’  I shall not refer to Bachelard again.  But, as you see, he’s an excellent kicking-off-point.

Everyone’s mind has those same two sides.  Though often one dominates over the other.  And I question whether it’s right to label them male and female.

Seeing Nature as a Mirror

Many years ago an ex-student of mine paid me a visit.  It was a cold day in winter, he came into my office, sat down, and we started to talk.  Since leaving University, he told me, he’d had a nervous breakdown — but now he was cured.  ‘But,’ he said to me, ‘if I’d still been ill, when I came in this morning I’d have thought you were angry with me:  because the gas fire is on (bright red); that poster on the wall is crimson; and you’re wearing a scarlet tie.’

This is poetic thinking:  my student in his illness was thinking everything around him was targeted deliberately at himself.  He was taking the world personally.  Every detail in his surroundings was aimed at him.

There is a term in lit crit:  the ‘pathetic fallacy’ (Ruskin).  This is when an author is writing a novel:  he comes to a sad chapter – so he makes it rain;   or a violent chapter – so he gives us a thunderstorm;  or his characters are having a happy love affair – so he makes the sun shine into the bedroom.   But it’s neither pathetic nor a fallacy, really:  because we are in the world, we relate to the world, we depend on the world, we see it & need to see it in terms of our needs and  purposes.  (And remember, our ancestors were in the World long long before we were human at all, or anything like human.)

So how do we see the World?  We don’t just have a logical, utilitarian relationship with the world, we have an emotional relationship with it.   This is shown in the words we use about it.  E.g. fires ‘rage’, waves are ‘angry’, trees ‘whisper’ or ‘weep’,  rocks are ‘dangerous’, mountains are ‘majestic’, a stone can be ‘obstinate’, a rock can be ‘threatening’, a cave can be ‘welcoming’.   We have this tendency to attribute intentions & emotions to our surroundings.   It’s useful to see things this way:  if you see fires as ‘raging’ or waves as being ‘angry’, it warns you not to get too close.

Stone is a fellow-inhabitant of our human world.  We relate to it, and it relates to us.  Of course, you will tell me I’m speaking ‘metaphorically’.

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Read the rest of The Secret Life of Stone (5,734 words)

RGB (128, 24, 24) is also known as Falu Red, a traditional pigment out of silicates iron oxides from Falu Copper Mines. A recycling strategy that used to tinge every single timber construction across Sweden with the same tone.

- via deconcrete a really nice architetcure weblog which I’ve also added to my links list. In Finland it’s also widespread and called Keittomaali.

Negative

Quasi-Democracy by Katja Boxberg & Taneli Heikka. The book is available free in pdf format.

How was a once prosperous, even innovative, Nordic democracy
reduced into a warning example of econo-political
stagnation?

Positive

Mission for Finland by Demos group with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Go to the website to download the full pdf report also.

Finland is already the best country in the world. Considering its small size,
Finland has an unbelievable array of strengths and opportunities to solve some
of the world’s most wicked global problems. If Finland did not exist, it would
have to be invented. We have a mission.

It should be interesting to read these two together in parallel seeing as they appear to arrive at so different conclusions.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

Robert Anson Heinlein (via)

I’m at 13 out of 21 of the above list with 3 don’t knows……..

At the kindergarten, they speak Italian on Tuesday and Surmiran, a Romansch dialect, on Thursday. The rest of the week, the kids alternate between the two, but in the playground, the German dialect Bündnerdeutsch rules. On Sundays, they may attend the Catholic church, where the priest preaches in Schwyzerdütsch, or the Protestant one, where High German is the order of the day.

As a father bringing up bilingual kids I wish the English world woulde more open or porous to world different languages. (via)

The STX shipyard in Turku, Finland has just delivered the world’s largest cruise liner ever built. Called The Allure of the Seas it’s capable of housing 6,300 passengers and 2,100 staff, and at approximately five times the size of the Titanic, it is in effect the largest self contained mobile town in the world. Everything about it is big, one lifeboat alone from this ship can hold 370 people, it’s 17 floors ranks it as one of the tallest buildings in Finland if it was only on dry land. Just check out the twin apartment blocks facing each other with sports facilities on the roof (stand up Corbusier’s Unite de’Habitation).

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Read the rest of Allure of the Seas (555 words)

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.

• Tampere Central Arena
• Daniel Libeskind Architects

All photos form Daniel Libeskind Architects.

The Exhibition

Firstly unlike the previous three biennial exhibitions this one contains many housing projects, and some of them are actually quite good (slight irony intended). Churches and Schools which previously supplied the best projects are missing here. There is also a feeling that the judges consciously spread their net a lot wider this time. There is an electrical substation, some master plans and renovations so there is a wider cross section from the built environment, as a result it’s more relevant and larger in conceptual scope than before so thanks to the jurors for this.

Meklin Villa one of my favourites from the show

All this hasn’t brought the quality of the projects down, there are of course some outstanding projects here also which stand out from the crowd. Also the Architecture feels a bit more colourful and experimental. Overall this is a lovely exhibition.

Some notable examples are The Huvitus Housing Terrace, the Anttolanhovi  Villas, or Villa Meklin which is a notable addition to the many Archiapelago type summer houses which have often showcased the best of Scandinavian design over the years. Also The Swedish school and the Vellamo centre would not look out of place on any best of list over the last couple of years. So there is strength in breadth and depth here but some missed opportunities too.

Vellamo Boat museum photo by Jussi Tianen

Look at the Salmisaari masterplan and you will see the Architects really thought about opening up the development to its coastline and the public access running through. But if you visit the reality it comes up a little short. But missed opportunities are for the next time and even in Salmisaari so far a high standard has been achieved.

Looking Forward

I don’t want to get too much into the debate about how these exhibitions like the Sterling Prize for example can become divorced from the reality of building, that Architects congratulate each other on their fantastic work when their contribution is a only a part of the whole building and design process. Clearly here the line gets crossed a little but doesn’t invalidate the endeavour.  It also brings me to this wider issue of stepping back a moment and then looking forward to the future.  So what do these buildings tell us about the time and place we live in now? That the distance Finland has to travel to be comfortable in the multicultural and international stage is still a little way off but getting closer. A coherent approach to the environmental issues of today is also clearly lacking, the building industry as a whole here seems to be entirely devoid any approach at all to our times most pressing problem. A symptom I think of the general attitude to this problem as being an infrastructural issue and not having an Architectural remit, we will have to see how this continues to plays out.

The many strands of thinking ,attitudes,styles and new directions that continually inform and run through Architectural practice do not always reveal themselves in a small countries best work even over two years but there is much here to give us hope for an inventive future.

Below you will find a full list of the projects included in the exhibition and a KML file showing all the projects on a map.

• Pasila Machine Workshop Area Blocks of Flats, Helsinki. Architects NRT Ltd
• Blocks of Flats in Myllypuro, Helsinki. A6 Architects
• Oscar Block of Flats, Helsinki. Tuomo Siitonen Architects
• Terraced Housing in Vuosaari, Helsinki. Kirsi Korhonen and Mika Penttinen Architects
• Villa Laulumaa, Oulainen. Anna and Lauri Louekari Architects
• Anttolanhovi Lakeside Villas and Hillside Villas, Mikkeli. Emma Johansson Architects; Timo Leiviskä Architects
• Villa Mecklin, Naantali. Huttunen–Lipasti–Pakkanen Architects
• Loft G, Helsinki. ALA Architects Ltd
• Kyly Sauna, Raseborg. Avanto Architects Ltd
• Ajurinmäki Day-Care Centre, Espoo. AFKS
• Tuomarila Day-Care Centre, Espoo. Auer & Sandås Architects ltd
• Swedish School of Social Science, Conversion and New Building, Helsinki. Juha Leiviskä, Jari Heikkinen
• Maritime Centre Vellamo, Kotka. Lahdelma & Mahlamäki Architects
• Helsinki Seafarers’ Centre. Ark-House Architects ltd
• Provincial Archives, Hämeenlinna. Heikkinen–Komonen Architects
• Oulu City Offices. Sarc Architects Ltd
• Salmisaari Detail Plan and Cityscape Plan, Helsinki. Helsinki City Plannig Department; B & M Architects Ltd and WSP Finland
• Varma Offices, Helsinki. Tuomo Siitonen Architects
• Salmisaarenaukio 1 Offices, Helsinki. Helin & Co Architects
• National Board of Education, Renovation, Helsinki. Sarc Architects Ltd
• Pori City Hall Restoration. Vilhelm Helander, Tytti Valto
• Paulig Roastery, Helsinki. Tommila Architects Ltd
• Finnish Wooden Boat Centre, Kotka. Lahdelma & Mahlamäki Architects
• Open-Air Museum Conservation Centre, Helsinki. Häkli Architects
• 110 kV Switching Substation, Helsinki. K2S Architects Ltd
• Ekenäs Harbour Area, Raseborg. B&M Architects Ltd; WSP Finland Ltd

Previous exhibitions 0607

KML of all the projects 0809.

Helsinki region now has a website Helsinki Region Infoshare which is going to be a hub for publishing information about the city region over the next few years until I guess the cities and regions take this job over for themselves.  Statistical information of all kind will be published here , so it should be a goldmine going forward for all kinds of uses.  This is a great step forward and hopefully it is going to be more usable than the current database for Helsinki  (aluesarjat). Helsinki has also started to publish a statistical yearbook (pdf & excel / website).

The next step forward will be how to use this information to assist in design, planning and infrastructure of the city. This goes from empowering better governance right down to how individual homes can more efficiently use power grids for example. Its really important for the already mountain of data to be able to be found and then processed in a single place. Maybe this will be it.

There is an enormous gap between the process of designing and the physical reality of building. Architects get so used to equating drawings and models with buildings – despite the vast scale, material and factual differences – that they assume an equivalence between them. Perhaps it is this sense of equivalence that allows them to gloss over the work done by other consultants and contractors and claim sole authorship. This equivalence affects architectural education in particular, where buildings and images are discussed as if they are literally interchangeable.  -(via)

This is especially interesting to me because we are just about to move house. Our new home is a 70′s oil guzzler and we will start to look at ways to make it more energy efficient, to save our wallets and the planet also.

click on image for slideshow

Photos of New York and Berlin by Michael Wesely using extremely long exposures in some cases over a year. They have the quality of old photos, a ghostly presence that seem at first glance almost ephemeral the reverse of what they actually are in many ways, as they show the additional layer of time and change added to the city. Cars and people travel too fast to be seen in this world, day and night blend into one. If buildings could see and experience this might be how the city looked to them……fabulous. A nice article about him here (via)

Me: Colour or Black and White?

House of Orphans by Helen Dunmore  Amazon (.com) (.uk).

This is an interesting book because it is by a British author but the novel is set in pre-revolution Finland. As such the author faces the challenge of making the characters and settings both believable and accurate without bogging down the story with too much detail. So the art of storytelling the signs of a good writer are abundant here. Infact from my perspective Dunmore has managed to bring realistic characters to life as well as bring out Finnish Archetypes without them overshadowing the story. The clash of Swedish Fins and Fins through the references to nature versus civilisation for example or of the struggle between political and social world views going on at that time. This is a book that perches historically on the edge of the abyss of civil war and even later the struggle for survival of the winter war.

The novel for me dissolves a little at the end with the characters drifting off into the crowd, also the central character of Eeva is never dealt with for me fairly in this novel. Mostly she is the subject against which others characters thoughts are reflected. So this book feels like it could and should have gone in a number of different directions at the end.

However I had an ulterior motive for reading this book in that it could be added to a list of books about Finland (about Finnishness) that  allow you to understand the Finnish psyche a little better. Something Dan Hill in relation to designing for a Helsinki housing block called Method Designing. This book would slide into the required reading category in understanding Finnish politics even up to the present day as it highlights something of the route to independence that Finland took.

These polls or surveys of best places like the ones in Monocle magazine for instance seem to be limited in that they don’t , indeed can’t, include for those things that can’t be statistically analysed. But how much of the love of a place comes from these things important as they are? It was still nice to be ranked top though, and I do think in a limited sense it’s a good sign and deserved too.

I now have a huge backlog of half written posts some about what I’ve seen or read over the summer so hopefully there will be alot more activity here now again.

“Analytical study shows that the ancient masonry mortar is a kind of special organic-inorganic composite material,” Zhang said. “The inorganic component is calcium carbonate, and the organic component is amylopectin, which comes from the sticky rice soup added to the mortar.”

Detail of Wigert Summerhouse in Brekkestø, Norway by Wenche Selmer (taken from the book Norwegian Wood – the Thoughful architecture of Wenche Selmer / photography by Frode Larsen) (via)

This photo of a beautiful detail sums up something of the Scandinavian Summer, long days by the water, living with nature, escape from the burdens of city life.

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Read the rest of Walking the Line (714 words)

• Kiruna the city that’s cracking apart.
• Subterranea Helsinki
• Jørn Utzon Lecture Report

This book takes nine practices from the U.S.A which are by their nature different from a standard architectural practice and look at how they work.
Some things are about the practical building relationships during a project for example LTL have revised contractual relationships to retain quality control. SHoP retain a financial interest in some of the projects they design.  Servo are a little similar to Ocean which has a strong connection to Helsinki.

Otherwise mostly these practises are in some way using computers, their methodological use of them and transformation of them to open up new possibilities, the work of Chris Hoxie with his various collaborators is a good example. But that’s more of a subtext to the wider enquiry of how Architects work and how that might change in the near future.

It’s not strictly a book about the buildings which these Architects make but about the processes that the Architects use in order to arrive at the buildings. This then is quite a rare book in that it looks at the process of Architecture and is not much focused on the end result.

This book could be seen then as a cross section in that it is organised by type, eg into essays, images, interviews, even construction documents. Its also a cross section by intent, meaning it gives you a deep insight into how these contemporary Architects work today, and by implication how we all might work tomorrow.The interviews succeed the best in shedding light these designers processes , the drawings and photos provide some background flavour but don’t go much beyond that.

This is an optimistic book one where it’s subjets are all in different way changing the process of architectural design itself some more and some less on the edge of traditional idea of an architectural practice. If you aren’t an Architect or Designer this book is of limited value and won’t sit well on a coffee table however if you are then this is a book that is worth diving deep into.

Herzog and DeMeurons’ hotel design for the centre of Helsinki has been rejected. Earlier this month on 3rd April the city council voted against the scheme and it looks like a study of the whole area will take place before another competition is announced. I’m not sure but I’m guessing that that this will probably mean the end for the whole of the current South Harbour scheme.

This would have been only the second time a foreign Architect would have built a major building in Finland and it’s a little disappointing if not inevitable that it won’t go ahead. Inevitable in that for several years already this has been the most controversial site in Finland and it seems no one can get a project off the ground there. This proposed Hotel was also drawing much critisism from Helsinki residents and professionals also, only the city planners seeming to back it.

I’m not sure the Herzog and DeMeuron project was best suited there either but I think the city could have looked at some alternatives, like locating it in the Jätkäsaari area instead. There a suitable place over the water could have been found for a brave design in terms of materials which could have added something to the often times too polite modernism of the last few years in Helsinki.

• Interview with Jacques Herzog.
• South Harbour scheme.
• Photo is by Herzog and DeMeuron click on it for full size

Note: The following post is by my Father Graham Martin. He sent this to me after a conversation we had over the phone. I don’t remember exactly what we started talking about but we ended up with Dad telling me about this passage by a famous French author about the Eiffel Tower which had been newly erected in his beloved Paris and had enraged him so. I really wanted to know what he said, it seems so many of the worlds great landmarks start off life being despised.  Being a retired French lecturer of course helps a little when you want to translate some french so here it is with my dad’s comments of course.

(...)
Read the rest of Against the Eiffel Tower (1,663 words)

The first showing of M.C.Escher in Finland is now at the Amos art gallery. With a film and most of Eschers best loved wood cuttings and prints on show it is a real treat. What I love about Escher is his play with dimensions. He shows with his illusions on the paper the difference between reality and its representation and he is able to incorporate the dimension of time into his pictures by defying reality, for example ascending and descending with its infinite stair loop.

Gombrich in his seminal book Art and Illusion showed how art moved from portraying reality ‘as it was’ to ‘how it appears’ and then in turn with the invention of photography and film moved away from the format of representation. But Escher by using the rules of perspective moves us to see the tricks behind the portrayal of space in Western art. He is playing both with us and with reality, and this makes him special indeed singular in the  art world.

I think there is much to learn from and be inspired by the ideas and implict demonstration by Escher of the inferiority of one sense alone in the understanding of space and I wish more of that thinking, that type of questioning, was present in our design culture at the moment.

update: Lee in comments to this post said Ecosia is a scam(see update 3). I’ve had a look at this (see article here and here).  It seems Ecosia is a for profit organisation but looks quite legitimate and worthwhile to use. It is always worth checking these things out however, and there are plenty of other search engines out there which do much the same thing. eg. Ecosearch, Goodsearch, to name just two which we could all look at and utilise.

update 2: Read the comments to this post before you do anything else! There are plenty of big questions surrounding Ecosia once you start to look at them and as to whether its the sort of business you would want to support. Look carefully into these environmental search engines and if in doubt don’t use them. The best advice may be to make a donation to a good charity instead. WWF.

update 3: Christian the founder of Ecosia has posted a comment below and also a reference from the WWF has been found. This all taken together means that using Ecosia to do your online searching will make a contribution and seems to be totally legitimate.

The Art of Simon Page, just fantastic. Check out his international year of astronomy set also.

The Nomeculture of a city is basic on one level in that it would be impossible to navigate without it. But it is also an ephemeral layer, it reveals history and cultural attitudes that become enshrined and hidden in named spaces.

History

Helsinki’s nomeculture started officially in 1820 when the street names were only in the Swedish Language, but by 1833 Russian Language signs  in the Cyrillic alphabet began to appear alongside the Swedish Names, natural enough as Finland was then annexed into the Russian Empire. It was only in 1906 that the first Finnish language street names began to be added at first in Töölö.  In 1945 a committee was established to name streets officially.

Block Names

In 1810 a Stokholm regulation required the numbering of all sites in blocks bordering on streets. Corner buildings had to have street signs added to the side of the walls, but with the additional requirement that the name of the block should be added.  Apparently the names of the blocks in Stokholm in the centre are still well known. In Helsinki in 1820 when the names of the streets were ratified it seems they followed the Stokholm tradition and named the blocks also. Domestic and wild animals were used as well as names of flowers in old Helsinki whereas in the Uusimaa suburbs the names of fish and birds were used. But by 1910 Helsinkis blocks were no longer given names along with their street names, it seems this had died out from common usage. In the last few years Helsinki city has reintroduced the names of the traditional blocks at least back to the centre of the city with block names indicated alongside the street names.

In 2003 the position of Nomeclature designer was established in Helsinki City Planning Department, this person has responsibility for naming streets, districts, parks, marinas, schools, hospitals even bus stops.

• helsinki planning department

Read voraciously, many books at a time. Only then will you hear the conversation taking place among them. (via)

But how can a person who can achieve so much also be so self destructive and incompetent in other areas of life? A new theory of behavioural genetics might be of help to Matti. It’s called the Orchid hypothesis and it says that while most of us are born ‘dandelions’ in that we can take root almost anywhere and thrive, some are born ‘orchids’ and in many situations don’t thrive, but in ideal conditions can be truly remarkable.

In other words the things that helped to make Matti one of the best ski jumpers and athletes in history also may contribute to his inability to fit into society normally. Anyway Finns cherish Matti as an orchid already, if he were to become suddenly well adjusted we would have lost a well loved institution.

He also has a great turn of phrase able to utter delphic truths in the great sportsmen tradition.

• Tekemätöntä ei saa tekemättömäksi
  What is not done, cannot be undone
• Jokainen tsäänssi on mahdollisuus!
  Every chance is an opportunity!
• Huominen on aina tulevaisuutta.
  Tomorrow is always the future.
• Elämä on laiffii.
  Living is life.
• Se on ihan fifty-sixty miten käy.
  The odds are fifty-sixty.
• No pilluhan se on aina mielessä mutta hypätään nyt ensin!
  Pussy is always on my mind, but I’ll jump first (when a reporter asked Matti what he has in his mind)
• Rakkaus on kuin lankakerä ? se alkaa ja loppuu.
  Love is like a ball of wool ? it starts and it ends.

(quotes via)