Related posts:

1. Helsinki Library Competition
2. The Self Sufficient City Competition
3. Serlachius Competition Results

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1. Guggenheim May Come to Helsinki
2. Guggenheim Redux
3. Guggenheim Revisited

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

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1. Finnish Wine
2. Finnish Architecture and Design Websites A List
3. Learning Finnish

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

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1. Japanese House

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.

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1. Robin Hood Gardens Video

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.

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

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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.

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1. Espoo does Tango
2. Europan 9 Results
3. Venice Floods

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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.

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1. The Priest of Evil by Matti Joensuu

The Köppen-Geiger climate classification world map.

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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.

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1. South Harbour Competition
2. South Harbour
3. Prefab living

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)

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1. Frank Lloyd Wright Interview ’57

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 

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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.

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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)

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1. South Harbour
2. South Harbour Competition
3. Herzog & DeMeuron Hotel Cancelled

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

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1. The Age of The Cube is over
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3. Charles and Ray Eames

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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There are a spate of proposed skyscrapers proposed in the Helsinki area at the moment. The most notable of a mostly bland bunch is the still ongoing planning of the Pasila area and now a 33 storey hotel in Jätkäsaari. This hotel design by Davidsson Tarkela is financed by Arthur Buchardt the Norwegian investor who was behind the failed hotel in the South Harbour by Herzog & DeMeuron. It’s clear in a development as big as the harbor regeneration in Helsinki there will be at least one big hotel, but I’m really not convinced about this design. Buchardt is behind the new Victoria Hotel in Stockholm by Gert Wingårdh Architects. Notice any similarities?

I’m not against building high but developers and planners need to think long and hard about doing it. This type of approach is much more valid  in the Victoria Hotel location which is beside the main road somewhere between the airport and the center of town, but the central location in Jätkäsaari makes it a different proposition altogether . Any hotel at Jätkäsaari has some great context and the addition of  a stream of interesting ideas being fed into the harbor development.

Buchardt and the city planners should give the opportunity for their Architects to help shape the project much more or open it up to a competition. (via)

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1. Herzog & DeMeuron Hotel Cancelled
2. Dynamic Helsinki Website
3. Helsinki is moving

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)

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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.

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1. Timber Construction in Finland
2. Finnforest office update

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

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1. WeeGee Opens

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.

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1. Fortress Finland
2. Geo Finland
3. No New Building In Finland

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

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3. Helsinki World Design Capitol 2012

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.

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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)

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.

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1. Star Wars a New Heap

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.

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1. Guggenheim May Come to Helsinki
2. Locating the Guggenheim
3. View from Stockholm

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

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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)

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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.

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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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1. Europan 9 Results
2. Koivusaari Ideas Competition
3. The Self Sufficient City Competition

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

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

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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.

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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!

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1. The Tate Modern: rise of the megagallery

“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)

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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.

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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)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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’.

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

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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.

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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.

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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……..

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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)

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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).

(...)
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.

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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.

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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.

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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)

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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.

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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)

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Me: Colour or Black and White?

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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.

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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.

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“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.”

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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.
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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.

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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

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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)

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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.

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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.

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

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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

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

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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)

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But here is an idea lets try to make this award and designation more than just an excuse to sell some Aalto vases or Harri Koskinen block lamps (note to iitala never reject anything he designs again!). There is a chance with this award to invigorate the base of finnish design, startups and urbanists. Not just to advertise the top down framework Finland has created in the last few years, but create something from the bottom up.

Definitely networked urbanism has a part to play in this, but not centrally planned like songdo and not just a new way of organising activities but new ways of organising relationships within the city. Also maybe I’d like to add many other sorts of activism, whether its urban farming or community generation. This city has the right conditions to meld these things and shape city and design thinking globally that could, just maybe, put Helsinki in the centre of something and belie its geographical location. Here’s to dreaming the future!

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1. 23.4% Karjasilta, Oulu
2. 21.4% Koivuhaka, Kokkola
3. 17.3% Lutakko, Jyväskylä
4. 15.0% Sundsberg, Kirkkonummi
5. 13.8% Tammela, Tampere
6. 9.1% Arabianranta, Helsinki

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Cino Zucchi Architects have updated their masterplan for Pasila redevelopment. It would add up to forty story 160m high skyscrapers to the Helsinki skyline, at the moment the highest buildings are about 100m high. Pasila was planned and built as an expansion of the centre of Helsinki, infact as early as Eliel Saarinens’ masterplan which identified it as a new location for a central railway station and expansion of the urban centre.
Anyone who knows Helsinki however knows that while it has many offices and housing, as a functioning part of urban Helsinki life the 70′s and 80′s development has pretty much failed. Judging by the scope of the Zucchi masterplan we will get some good buildings but not a significant improvement to the city.
(photo by Cino Zucchi Architects)

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Nine up and coming Finnish Architecture practises have a book publication out called Newly Drawn – Emerging Finnish Architects (website).

The firms involved are; Hollmén Reuter Sandman, Verstas, NOW, Anttinen Oiva Architects, Lassila Hirvilammi, Avanto, ALA, AFKS and K2S. The link to buy the book is here.

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• Antti Möller-  Introduction.
• Otso Lapila from Oranssi – How the squatters deal with property owners and officials.
• Joseph Mulcahy – Argentina cooperative factories.
• Jaakko Lehtonen and Joseph Mulcahy – Urban farming (dodo) and DIY camp at the Pasila railway yard.
• Bastian Zeiger – Earthships – building with wasted resources.

I had a great time listening to a small but enthusiastic group of people talk about altering the city for the better themselves, and crucially there seems to be an avenue to do this legally and creatively as groups like Oranssi have shown over the last few years. Hopefully I can participate a little as these potential projects get off the ground.

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Oslo based architect firm Reiulf Ramstad Architects (nice website – no flash!) is working on a plan to build the world’s highest building ever constructed fully in wood in Kirkenes, Norway. 16 to17 floors in height, all built in natural materials with the aim of being CO2-neutral. Looking through the proposal quickly it looks like it could be a new urban model for smaller Scandinavian cities although its been done elsewhere before. (via)

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But although georss doesn’t seem to have got off the ground much Geospatial data and mapping in other fields has alot. With google crowdsourcing and up scaling their production of 3d buildings and cities on google earth for example and extra layers being added to google maps I thought I would provide a google map and earth (kml) feed to this site. Its a good way of looking round old articles and consuming them in a geo specific way and also linking on and out with other information from the web. The links are here and at the bottom of the site.

Both the links will automattically update as new information is added, let me know what you think.

• google maps link ( anyone who is not familiar with google earth should start here!)
• kml network link

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In Lake Titicaca in Bolivia, a Quechua Indian told me that everything one does in life involves looking forward while going backward simultaneously. This I didn’t understand. I said, ‘What do you mean, going backward?’And he said,’Well, it’s very simple. For us, for the Quechua, the past is in front of us. It’s in front of us because we know the past and we can look at it. And the future is behind because we don’t know what it brings so we move into the future, but we move backwards.’ The expression is ñawpaman puni. -David Tuchsneider 1992:63-64

A beautiful concept that we are facing backward while moving forward that seems enshrined as it is in the Quechua language a quite deep insight. But I note now while I’m studying Finnish in my spare time that languages have many and subtle differences in their attitude to space and time and grammatical systems are by nature going to constrain your thinking about space if you rely on them.

Related posts:

1. Helsinki is moving
2. moving lewism.org

Helsinki Underground Masterplan above for full size image go here.

(key:blue is planned underground space and grey is existing, orange is possible future)

Underground churches, gyms, ice hockey pitches, running tracks, water processing plants, shopping malls, bus stations the list goes on and on. Infact according to regulations buildings over a certain size must provide some sort of bomb shelter, it’s often unavoidable not to build underground.

Probably the best known underground areas are around Central Station which is home to a network of metro stations shops and tunnels that connect much of the city centre together and allow you to arrive and move through the centre of the city without surfacing at all. Also because when new facilities are built they are connected back into the existing underground system it expands out like the roots of a tree. A good example of this is round Kaisaniemi metro which links underground station with shopping mall within an existing building that joins up to an atrium made from a filled in urban block which in turn links through to an underground cinema. Here the underground city tunnels back into the urban fabric above ground also.

I think this is one of the most impressively urban things about Helsinki which otherwise is a quite a centrally planned and unobtrusive small city. This ‘deep urbanism’  is where Helsinki distinguishes itself as being different, and the fact that the city has an official underground city plan reflects this attitude to some degree.

I hope that the new harbour redevelopment includes for some sizeable public facilities underground that can continue to expand the city below ground too.

Central Station underground

photo by mattitianen

Below are a list of some the larger underground structures in Helsinki:

Temppeliaukio Church

Temppeliaukion Church

Temppeliaukio Church was built into solid rock in 1969. One of the better modern buildings in Helsinki. The sides of the church let water through on purpose when it rains allowing for natural water flows down the side of the church.

Itäkeskus underground swimming centre

The underground swimming centre was carved into bedrock in 1993. The spa-type underground space contains a 50-metre swimming pool, whirlpool baths, saunas, a gym, etc. The facility can be converted into a shelter for 3,800 persons.

Viikinmäki underground wastewater treatment plant

photo by sameli

Helsinki Water has centralised all of its wastewater treatment operations into the Viikinmäki wastewater treatment plant. The total volume of excavated rock was 1,200,000 m3. The first phase (1,000,000 m3) was excavated in 1988-91 and the second phase (200,000 m3) in 2000-01.

Otaniemi – underground spaces
Over 50 underground spaces, including the national film archives, the underground shelters of the Dipoli conference centre and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Helsinki University of Technology campus area connection tunnels, Laboratory of Rock Engineering test tunnel, etc.

Western metro expansion
Länsimetro is 13.9-km long twin tunnel and 7 new stations. Construction is estimated to start in late 2009 and the project is expected to last four years at most. The westbound metro line will be completly underground

KEHU – Helsinki Service tunnel

2.5-km service tunnel across the city, from east to west, under the historical centre of Helsinki. Construction scheduled for 2006-10. The tunnel will be used to service shops, restaurants, offices and hotels in the area.

Underground coal storage and district cooling
Helsinki Energy’s underground coal storage facility in Salmisaari was built in 2001-03. The project also included an underground district cooling centre, a power station and 3.5 km of tunnels. The total excavated volume was 550,000 m3. Each coal silo is 65 metres high and has a 40-metre diameter with a circular plan cross-section. The volumetric capacity of each silo is 81,000 m3.

Airport transit (Kehärata)
Airport transit is a new rail section connecting the city centre to Vantaankoski local track with the main northbound rail track. The whole project consists of 18 km of new double track and 8 new stations. Of this, 8 km of track and 4 stations will be fully underground.

Päijänne Water Tunnel

The Worlds’ second longest continuous Rock Tunnel which brings fresh water from Lake Päijänne to Helsinki. (wikipedia / homepage)

District Heating System

The whole city has a district heating system which supplies over 90% of Helsinki’s heating requirements. This system is supported by a massive underground tunnel network of more than 40 km of multi-utility  tunnels.

Hartwall Arena

Subterranean full size ice hockey hall

Suomenlinna Tunnel

See the excellent post at Locating Helsinki about this. A service tunnel that connects one of Helsinki’s most important islands to the mainland. There has been talk about expanding the metro here one day.

Crazy Ideas:

Helsinki Tallinn tunnel

References:

WTC

Helsinki Underground City

rumors

helsinki underground masterplan

Finnish Tunneling Association

My Helsinki Subterranea flickr set

Related posts:

1. The Centre of Helsinki
2. Living Room for Helsinki
3. Helsinki is moving

• c_life : City as a Living Factory of Ecology (Winner)- by Arup (London) / Sauerbruch Hutton / Experientia / Galley Eco Capital
• Cradle of Innovation: WSP Group(London, UK) / Heatherwick Studios / B&M Architects /JKMM Architects / Space Syntax / Helsinki University / AA Palmberg Ltd / Pekka Himanen / Pauli Aalto-Setäl
• Low Carbon-High Urban: Peter Rose & Partners / Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates / Guy Nordenson and Associates/ Matthias Schuler, Transsolar Climate Engineering / Mobility in Chain / ARO Architectural Research Office
• Rebuilding 2.0:  REX / Croxton Collaborative / NOW (New York, USA) / Transsolar Energietechnik / Magnusson Klemencic Associates / Bureau Bas Smets / 2×4 / Arup New York / Front / Jonathan Rose Companies
• ReciproCity: Bjarke Ingels Group, BIG (Copenhagen, Denmark) / Vahanen / ARUP Foresight Innovation / Transsolar Energietechnik / Anttinen Oiva Arkkitehdit AoA / Masu Planning / Passiivitalo.fi / Pasi Mäenpää / Mikko Jalas

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1. Jätkäsaari Low2No Competition Winner
2. Finnish Architecture and Design Websites A List
3. Stirling Prize 2005

In May 2000 I was fired from my job as a reporter on a finance newsletter because of an obsession with a video game. It was the best thing that ever happened to me.

From here the stage is set for Rossignol to take you on a semi-autographical tour of the real life world of the games industry. The book is basically split into three.  London, Seoul and Reykjavik with a conclusion ‘home’ added to the end. Splitting the book up into cities reflects not just in the geography of Rossignol’s travels but the subjects of the book.  London is more autobiographical and is much more about the gaming industry about the transforming power of the game in peoples lives although I wasn’t entirely convinced about all of this. Anything that generates so much money must by definition mean that people can make a living in it, that it becomes an industry by default anyway. But it acts as a way into the world of gaming well enough.

That gaming is capable of Feeding back into the real world for example in Luis Von Ahn’s  ESP game or Nina Ferrerman’s looking at mapping disease spreads within computer games illustrates one of Rossignols’ key insights that there is a two way street between gaming and reality. That they can alter each other that they may be diffferent in different parts of the globe in different situations. Seoul shows this effect really well the computer gaming bars of S.Korea perhaps setting a standard for East Asia which is quite different to Europe and the U.S.

That games can be a feedback process and this process may not be directly related to that of playing the game. Suddenly for me the book started to spark across different ideas and subjects and really came alive at that point. The third part Reykjavik deals mostly with Eve Online which for many reasons is quite different from most other online games and is capable of emergent behaviour, even in real life. It brings me onto a quote from Will Wright in the book which really helps to sum up the bridge I felt between Architecture and Gaming reading this book.

When we do these computer models, those aren’t the real models, the real models are in the gamer’s head. The computer game is just a compiler for that mental model in the player. We have this ability as humans to build these fairly elaborate models in our imaginations, and the process of play is the process of pushing against reality, building a model, refining a model by looking at he results of looking at interacting with things. – Will Wright 2006.

I’m tantalised and seduced by the beauty of the Architecture of video games, also not a little jealous of their freedom and power where in real life Architects seem constrained by conditions, culture and themselves too often.

There is something more in this book too, that the process of gaming might open up new avenues for architects themselves. That we find ourselves in an age where Simulation starts to replace representation not only as a narrative structure but in design and conceptual terms that may in turn effect Achitecture, cities, even cultures. This  seems to be a powerful message in the book which Rossignol only begins to touch on. I look forward to the follow up to further investigate this new frontier.

• Interview with Jim Rossignol by bldgblog.
• Jim Rossignol blogs here and there.
• Ok I’m off to try Mirror’s Edge.

Related posts:

1. Gaming the City

If a city doesn’t have sufficient density, as in L.A., then strange things happen. It’s human nature for us to look at one another— we’re social animals after all. But when the urban situation causes the distance between us to increase and our interactions to be less frequent we have to use novel means to attract attention: big hair, skimpy clothes and plastic surgery. We become walking billboards.

He just writes so well about the world. I might need to add his new book Bicycle Diaries to the wanted list. (via)

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update: I checked back today (17.09.09) and they have a feed now. Nice work!

Related posts:

1. Finnish Architecture and Design Websites A List
2. Finnish Architecture 0607
3. moving lewism.org

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2. lewism worldmap

click on image for slideshow

The Rosetta disk is an archive of  1,500 languages  that can comfortably be held in the hand. The underside of the disk has,

.. over 13,000 microetched pages of language documentation. Since each page is a physical rather than digital image, there is no platform or format dependency. Reading the Disk requires only optical magnification. Each page is .019 inches, or half a millimeter, across. This is about equal in width to 5 human hairs, and can be read with a 650X microscope (individual pages are clearly visible with 100X magnification).

The disk is contained in a sphere the bottom piece of which is made of stainless steel and meant to be etched with information unique to that disk the top half of the sphere is a glass lens that magnifies the top of the disk. Through this magnifying glass you can read the text of the major languages spiral down and reduce in size smaller and smaller.

The text begins at eye-readable scale and spirals down to nano-scale. This tapered ring of languages is intended to maximize the number of people that will be able to read something immediately upon picking up the Disk, as well as implying the directions for using it

The casing is beautiful with the words spiralling down into the orb, the underside of the disk presents an equally dazzling grid of multicoloured pixels. But what I really love about it is the spiral of words that pulls you in deeper into the sea of languages a kind of parallel with Pieter Brueghals the Tower of Babel, which pulls you up a spiral all the time while God splits the languages of those who ascend over and over again. The process of the real life preservation and the mythical creation of languages is almost exactly the same. Both reach a point in the spiral where understanding fails….

The dream is to preserve and keep these languages and be able to rediscover them over the Milenea as many will have died out already before we reach the end of this century. A micro fossilisation of knowledge frozen in time.

References:

• Rosettaproject
• TheLongnow
• sciencetumbled
• spencerlowel (who took the photos)

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Related posts:

1. Warsaw Museum II

A wonderful post and map (seen above) from Locating Helsinki about the coast at the centre of Helsinki and how it has changed, and Darren found a list of islands some of them shown on the image above which have disappeared. Another set of large changes are due to take place over the coming years also with the industrial port being moved and urban redevelopment happening in it’s place. Click on map for a larger view.

Related posts:

1. Helsinki Biennale 2008
2. Locating Helsinki
3. Laituri

It’s the first time that the evolving projects of Helsinki’s old harbour have given me genuine cause for optimism that real quality work is being incorporated into a masterplan that has all too often seemed from here to be cherry picked urban images without any real direction. This project could help to change that situation.

Related posts:

1. The Self Sufficient City Competition
2. We Have a Winner!
3. Oslo Ski Jump Winner

Related posts:

1. Open House Helsinki 2007
2. Open House Helsinki 2008
3. Open Source Architecture

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.

Related posts:

1. Koivusaari Ideas Competition
2. Gazprom City Controversy
3. City Library

Related posts:

1. Finnish Architecture and Design Websites A List
2. Stirling Prize 2005 Winner
3. Design District Helsinki

Also last week I started a flickr group Finnish Architecture and Google Map of the same name, the flickr group is totally public and just drop me an email to be able to edit the google map. Hopefully these two places can be for collaboration and discovery for everyone.  Read on for the map.

(...)
Read the rest of Geo Finland (7 words)

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1. Telegram from Helsinki
2. Aalto Database
3. Finding Architecture

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1. Baltia
2. Swedish For…
3. Hyperdomus

strangely, the individual floors of a pagoda are not rigidly attached to those immediately above and below. They are simply stacked on top of one another like a pile of hats. The only force holding them together is gravity. Meanwhile, their loosely fitted joints allow each storey to slide horizontally independently of the others. (via)

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1. Japanese House

New research has thrown light on a group of megalithic structures in the North of Finland suggesting they may be laid out according to astrological ideas.

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Read the rest of Finnish Stonehenge (266 words)

• Map: Finnish Stonehenge

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1. Jump London

• aktt_notify_twitter: no

Playa Architects has won a competition for Mårtensbro School in Espoo. With a central open atrium space courtyard and varying levels curved in form on plan and section it looks very promising. Click on the image for a slideshow.

Related posts:

1. Europan 9 Results

• Map: http://www.lewism.org/?p=1302
• Stephen Holl Wins Second Helsinki Project
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The Around project from Sequence Point software has just launched in beta for nokia’s n97 phone.  It describes itself as augmented reality in that it adds a layer of information to whatever you are looking at through your phone. Thus in effect it means that pulling information from the cloud onto the city in real time is now here, albeit in a relatively buggy user unfriendly version at the moment. It’s another step for  the ‘street as platform‘  concept that city of sound wrote about last year.

At the moment it can fetch data from only two providers, ovi maps from nokia, and geonames which if I remember correctly pulls info from many different sources including wikipedia. So for example as shown in the image above landmark buildings are shown through your phone screen and you are able to click on the buildings to get further information from wikipedia for example about the building you are looking at.

This is pretty basic for a start but think for a moment that when through rss, buildings publish their data feeds, or newsagents sell papers through your phone with rfid technology, or you are notified that a friend is walking your way, that the information of the street becomes physically viewable, and usable what the potential of this project really is. In terms of information distribution, visualisation , and interaction then it is loaded with promise and it could help engender a new form of civic life. (via)

Related posts:

1. Stephen Holl Wins Second Helsinki Project
• aktt_notify_twitter: yes
• aktt_tweeted: 1
One comment]]> http://www.lewism.org/2009/07/29/the-around-project/feed/ 1 http://www.lewism.org/2009/07/29/robin-hood-gardens-video/ http://www.lewism.org/2009/07/29/robin-hood-gardens-video/#comments Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:38:04 +0000 lewism http://www.lewism.org/?p=1298
• Brutalism under threat
• Page 123
]]> Johnathan Glancey makes a video in the Guardian which for once is an open and honest look at whether Robin Hood Gardens is worth saving or not.

Related posts:

1. Brutalism under threat
2. Page 123
• aktt_notify_twitter: yes
• aktt_tweeted: 1
No comment]]> http://www.lewism.org/2009/07/29/robin-hood-gardens-video/feed/ 0 51.5070343 -0.0823975 http://www.lewism.org/2009/06/24/university-oath/ http://www.lewism.org/2009/06/24/university-oath/#comments Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:35:31 +0000 lewism http://www.lewism.org/?p=1295
• Aalto University
• Telegram from Helsinki
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I propose that Aalto University should stand for …..an unconditional respect for life, and for the conditions that support life. (via)

John Thackara proposes a new kind of oath for the forthcoming Aalto University based on a viewpoint that we are part of the Earths’ biological system not apart from it, and that the whole understanding of our development should shift to being sustainable in a wider sense. Read his excellent article fully to get an idea that what John means and how design and learning should contribute to more resilient and adaptive systems.

Related posts:

1. Aalto University
2. Telegram from Helsinki
2 comments]]> http://www.lewism.org/2009/06/24/university-oath/feed/ 2 http://www.lewism.org/2009/06/16/pixel-city/ http://www.lewism.org/2009/06/16/pixel-city/#comments Tue, 16 Jun 2009 18:47:17 +0000 lewism http://www.lewism.org/?p=1267
• Slussen Proposal
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A procedurally generated city or in other words a city generated purely by code by Seamus Young. Click on the image above to watch the video.

Related posts:

1. Slussen Proposal
No comment]]> http://www.lewism.org/2009/06/16/pixel-city/feed/ 0 http://www.lewism.org/2009/06/15/powerkiss/ http://www.lewism.org/2009/06/15/powerkiss/#comments Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:10:57 +0000 lewism http://www.lewism.org/?p=1205 Powerkiss is a Finnish Startup which integrates power charging of your mobile phones and other gadgets into pieces of furniture with no requirement for cables. The future for this should be huge just put your laptop or mobile down on a table to charge it, you will no longer have to think about charging your devices, they will just power up when you put them down. Powerkiss are quite far down the road of integration as well, they have collaborated with Martela which is bringing to market a couple of tables later in 2009 with wireless charging integrated into them, as you can see from the  photo below it looks almost boringly normal except for the graphics on the top informing you how to use the table.

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Read the rest of Powerkiss (28 words)

3 comments]]> http://www.lewism.org/2009/06/15/powerkiss/feed/ 3 http://www.lewism.org/2009/06/14/county-of-london-plan-1945/ http://www.lewism.org/2009/06/14/county-of-london-plan-1945/#comments Sun, 14 Jun 2009 18:51:16 +0000 lewism http://www.lewism.org/?p=1225
• Jump London
• Postcard from the Country
]]>

I found a set of images from the  County of London Plan 1945 booklet which marks a milestone in visualising and planning for cities. Already being produced before the end of WWII when it came out in 1945 the brainchild of Patrick Abercrombie. The set on flickr is however missing a great map of Social and Functional analysis of London which probably prefigures the common idea that the city is made up of a ‘city of villages’ , also worth noting the ideas about redeveloping the South Bank, an area which is still being struggled with today.

Related posts:

1. Jump London
2. Postcard from the Country
No comment]]> http://www.lewism.org/2009/06/14/county-of-london-plan-1945/feed/ 0 http://www.lewism.org/2009/06/13/gaming-the-city/ http://www.lewism.org/2009/06/13/gaming-the-city/#comments Sat, 13 Jun 2009 19:15:10 +0000 lewism http://www.lewism.org/?p=1203
• CAD Alternatives
• Skateboarding, Space and the City
]]> Did SimCity  programme a whole load of computer geeks with the failed assumptions of 60′s planning? Me, I think the idea is good but the wrong way around. Actually getting lots of people thinking about urban design or gaming the city is a fantastic concept and each iteration of the game has added complexity and difficulty. Maybe SimCity is the best thing that happened to planning? Personal disclaimer: I was addicted to simcity2000 back in the day….

Related posts:

1. CAD Alternatives
2. Skateboarding, Space and the City
No comment]]> http://www.lewism.org/2009/06/13/gaming-the-city/feed/ 0 http://www.lewism.org/2009/06/12/harvesting-the-air/ http://www.lewism.org/2009/06/12/harvesting-the-air/#comments Fri, 12 Jun 2009 18:16:28 +0000 lewism http://www.lewism.org/?p=1232 What if our buildings could harvest power from the air, not wind or solar but literally out of thin air? Its not as crazy as it first sounds with cities literally spewing out  electromagnetic radiation from TV, Radio, and Mobile phones constantly. That’s just what Nokia is doing right now,  actively researching this for future generations of Mobile phones.

It’s also not a new idea, in fact the first station to harvest the power from the atmosphere has already been built and now stands derelict in a plot on Long Island for sale for $1.6 million. (map)

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Read the rest of Harvesting the Air (375 words)

• Map: Wardenclyffe Tower
One comment]]> http://www.lewism.org/2009/06/12/harvesting-the-air/feed/ 1 40.9480591 -72.8983459 http://www.lewism.org/2009/06/08/usa-flood-control-system-should-go-dutch/ http://www.lewism.org/2009/06/08/usa-flood-control-system-should-go-dutch/#comments Mon, 08 Jun 2009 18:00:23 +0000 lewism http://www.lewism.org/?p=1192
• The best Dutch Zombie movie ever
• Architecture of Control
]]>

Flood control systems in the Netherlands are built to withstand storms of a severity seen once in 10,000 years, in the US the levees are built to stand up to storms of a severity anticipated once in a century. (via)

As storm season comes around in the USA Mary Landrieu a Senator from New Orleans wants the USA to move over to a sytem like in the Netherlands of managing water instead of just building levees. It’s really most about a change in mindset, from merely opposing nature to trying to manage it and cope with it where possible. Where all urban design incorporates water management into its basic structure.  Louisiana, Florida and Georgia could all benefit from such a change.  But I won’t be holding my breath.

update: mammoth took this post and wrote an excellent article about the Dutch water management system, bulwarks and flux.

Related posts:

1. The best Dutch Zombie movie ever
2. Architecture of Control
No comment]]> http://www.lewism.org/2009/06/08/usa-flood-control-system-should-go-dutch/feed/ 0 29.9265804 -90.1242828 http://www.lewism.org/2009/05/28/down-20/ http://www.lewism.org/2009/05/28/down-20/#comments Thu, 28 May 2009 18:39:20 +0000 lewism http://www.lewism.org/?p=1175 The construction of new buildings fell in Finland by 19 per cent in January-March. (sigh) I have a feeling it’s going to get worse before it gets better. (via)


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No comment]]> http://www.lewism.org/2009/05/28/down-20/feed/ 0 http://www.lewism.org/2009/05/16/unsung-hero/ http://www.lewism.org/2009/05/16/unsung-hero/#comments Sat, 16 May 2009 18:13:21 +0000 lewism http://www.lewism.org/?p=1161

And now MPs are feeling morose. Tough! They’ve had plenty of opportunities to do the right thing by parliament and by the people. At every juncture they behaved in the worst possible way. They refused legitimate requests, they wasted public money going to the high court, they delayed publication, they tried to exempt themselves from their own law, they succeeded in passing a law to keep secret their addresses from their constituents so as to hide the house flipping scandal … (via)

Remember a democratic society is an open society, so we’ve got to keep watching those bastards. Thanks to Heather and the other journalists who pursued this story.

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No comment]]> http://www.lewism.org/2009/05/16/unsung-hero/feed/ 0 http://www.lewism.org/2009/05/15/j%c3%b8rn-utzon-lecture-report/ http://www.lewism.org/2009/05/15/j%c3%b8rn-utzon-lecture-report/#comments Fri, 15 May 2009 18:48:29 +0000 lewism http://www.lewism.org/?p=1165
• Jørn Utzon Lecture in Helsinki
• A Tribute to Jørn Utzon
• Jørn Utzon dies aged 90
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Last Thursday night I went to see Adrian Carter give a lecture about  Jørn Utzon. It was a warm and poignant lecture given by a friend and colleague and I can’t think of a better tribute to Utzon that he could have given. It provided a timely reminder that Architecture is the power to stir emotion and create relationships between people and places, and that Utzon had that ability above most, so not much more need be said.

Some things I didn’t know also came up of course, that Utzon went to work for Aalto but after only six short weeks found out his wife was pregnant with their child and had to go back to Denmark. I did know already that it was Eero Saarinen who arriving late for the jury on the Sydney Opera House competition picked Utzon’s entry from the rejected pile and said it was the winner. I didn’t know however that so possessed he was with the project that he went back to his hotel that night and drew the perspective view of the building from the harbour that Utzon himself had neglected to submit, in an effort to persuade his colleagues that it was the winning project.

Utzon doubtless pursued a kind of purity of design that had it’s kindred spirit in nature and tried to engineer his projects in the way nature evolves form. Its clear to me many of his spaces and places he made are analogous to natural spaces, of clouds passing overhead, of the roof as tent or enclosure with a kind of bottom up philosophy of served and servant spaces that provided an order that was natural rather than preconceived. That he wasn’t designing buildings in the same way as say Gehry does is clear, and it’s part of what makes his Architecture timeless and so hard to emulate today.

The drawings Utzon’s studio made of the structural solution that was found after two years of fruitless calculations are beautiful and by Rafael Moneo (photo) a then newly qualified Spanish Architect, it makes me wonder what is the Architectural Equivalent of the Bacon number?  In the Modernist movement you could use Aalto quite easily to map the connections between Architects the world over. Here the connection is tangible both in a personal and professional form.

The issues of the Opera house budget came up and the tensions between Utzon and Arup the structural engineers,  first over the authorship of the structural solution something that Cecil Balmond would know something about and then on their continuing role in the project once Utzon had resigned. Although the Opera House made his name it also broke it in terms of his ability to get further work, there was some, but it could have been so much more.

Adrian Carter instigated and now runs the Utzon Centre which tries to promote the ideas of  Jørn Utzon.

The photo above is of the sketch made by Saarinen that helped Utzon win the competition and can be found online at Yale’s Saarinen database here.

Related posts:

1. Jørn Utzon Lecture in Helsinki
2. A Tribute to Jørn Utzon
3. Jørn Utzon dies aged 90
One comment]]> http://www.lewism.org/2009/05/15/j%c3%b8rn-utzon-lecture-report/feed/ 1 http://www.lewism.org/2009/05/08/amsterdam-weekend/ http://www.lewism.org/2009/05/08/amsterdam-weekend/#comments Fri, 08 May 2009 09:03:15 +0000 lewism http://www.lewism.org/?p=1144
• Subterranean Amsterdam
• I amsterdam
• Virtual Amsterdam
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We spent a weekend a couple of weeks ago in Amsterdam, so I was back in the city I lived in for two years after being away for seven. It struck me being back there again how strong the memories came back. From the pea shooter rat-a-tat of the old bike coming up the street behind you. To the smell of the streets, briney, dirty and rough. I remembered again how busy Amsterdam was compared to the comparative emptiness of Helsinki and the organic quality of the city at eye level. Hardly any building line is straight, or repeated. It feels like the city sways with the canals, moves with the muddy earth beneath on imperceptably slow waves. Contrasted with Helsinki which feels planted motionless  on the hard rock beneath. The shabby chique of the nine canals seemed a little more chique this time around but otherwise everything was mostly as it was. A beautiful city full of the undiscovered around every corner.

Related posts:

1. Subterranean Amsterdam
2. I amsterdam
3. Virtual Amsterdam
No comment]]> http://www.lewism.org/2009/05/08/amsterdam-weekend/feed/ 0 52.3751717 4.8890877 http://www.lewism.org/2009/04/29/j%c3%b8rn-utzon-lecture-in-helsinki/ http://www.lewism.org/2009/04/29/j%c3%b8rn-utzon-lecture-in-helsinki/#comments Wed, 29 Apr 2009 09:14:20 +0000 lewism http://www.lewism.org/?p=1147
• Jørn Utzon dies aged 90
• A Tribute to Jørn Utzon
• Macintosh Lecture
]]>

There is going to be a Jørn Utzon Lecture in the Atheneum on 14th May at 5pm given by Adrian Carter the Director of the Utzon centre. Drop me a line if you are going to be there.

Related posts:

1. Jørn Utzon dies aged 90
2. A Tribute to Jørn Utzon
3. Macintosh Lecture
6 comments]]> http://www.lewism.org/2009/04/29/j%c3%b8rn-utzon-lecture-in-helsinki/feed/ 6 http://www.lewism.org/2009/04/21/svenskar/ http://www.lewism.org/2009/04/21/svenskar/#comments Tue, 21 Apr 2009 19:38:42 +0000 lewism http://www.lewism.org/?p=1142
• Genetic Map of Europe
• Genetic Map of Europe 2
]]> The Swedish speaking finns or Svenskar constitute an important minority in Finland, but their genetic origins are a little uncertain (see wikipedia), there being much argument about how much immigration from Sweden happened and how much assimilation into the language of government was made. A study just made appears to confirm that there was a significant amount of immigration into Western Finland to the Swedish speaking areas. (via)

The Finnish population in Northern Europe has been a target of extensive genetic studies during the last decades. The population is considered as a homogeneous isolate, well suited for gene mapping studies because of its reduced diversity and homogeneity. However, several studies have shown substantial differences between the eastern and western parts of the country, especially in the male-mediated Y chromosome. This divergence is evident in non-neutral genetic variation also and it is usually explained to stem from founder effects occurring in the settlement of eastern Finland as late as in the 16th century. Here, we have reassessed this population historical scenario using Y-chromosomal, mitochondrial and autosomal markers and geographical sampling covering entire Finland. The obtained results suggest substantial Scandinavian gene flow into south-western, but not into the eastern, Finland.Male-biased Scandinavian gene flow into the south-western parts of the country would plausibly explain the large inter-regional differences observed in the Y-chromosome, and the relative homogeneity in the mitochondrial and autosomal data. On the basis of these results, we suggest that the expression of ‘Finnish Disease Heritage’ illnesses, more common in the eastern/north-eastern Finland, stems from long-term drift, rather than from relatively recent founder effects. (link)




Related posts:

1. Genetic Map of Europe
2. Genetic Map of Europe 2
No comment]]> http://www.lewism.org/2009/04/21/svenskar/feed/ 0 http://www.lewism.org/2009/04/09/finland-heroin-country/ http://www.lewism.org/2009/04/09/finland-heroin-country/#comments Thu, 09 Apr 2009 18:45:27 +0000 lewism http://www.lewism.org/?p=1132
• Postcard from the Country
• Bio-fuel in Finland
• Fortress Finland
]]> That little old granny crossing Mannerheimintie infront of you may just have been a heroin addict. Between 1930 and 1950 Finland consumed more heroin per capita than anywhere else on earth.

In Northern Europe we were really the odd men out. Finnish heroin consumption was many times higher than that of Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland – and just to put that into perspective, we are talking the combined figure of those four countries.

It was given liberally out during WWII also, see the amazing  story of  Aimo Koivunen a commando during the war and one of the first Finns to overdose on speed. The reason for there being so much use of Heroin in Finland is because it was a prescription drug present in many popular medicines of the time. But when Finland wanted to join the UN it phased out use of the drug quite quickly.

Related posts:

1. Postcard from the Country
2. Bio-fuel in Finland
3. Fortress Finland
No comment]]> http://www.lewism.org/2009/04/09/finland-heroin-country/feed/ 0 http://www.lewism.org/2009/04/02/the-skate-house/ http://www.lewism.org/2009/04/02/the-skate-house/#comments Thu, 02 Apr 2009 19:05:42 +0000 lewism http://www.lewism.org/?p=1115
• The Seashell House (Kotilo)
• No New Building In Finland
]]> The Skate House by Archivirus is a penthouse apartment in Athens turned into a skateable home. The ramp is fully integrated into the home creating a spatial flow for skating or walking (via).

Related posts:

1. The Seashell House (Kotilo)
2. No New Building In Finland
No comment]]> http://www.lewism.org/2009/04/02/the-skate-house/feed/ 0 http://www.lewism.org/2009/03/21/new-finnish-embassy-in-japan/ http://www.lewism.org/2009/03/21/new-finnish-embassy-in-japan/#comments Sat, 21 Mar 2009 18:02:13 +0000 lewism http://www.lewism.org/?p=1107
• Estonian Embassy in Second Life
• Japan and Finland with a Shared Design Culture
• Saarinen Under Threat
]]>

external view (images copyright Lahdelma & Mahlamäki)

Architects Lahdelma & Mahlamäki have won the design competition for a new Finnish Embassy in Tokyo. The project is notable for the semi-opaque all glass facade which is patterned. In so much as it conveys an atmosphere or even an imagined landscape by a layering through the different glazing it could be a great project.  Here is a link to the embassy page which annouced the winner, but it leaves a little questionmark as to when the project will be completed.

Related posts:

1. Estonian Embassy in Second Life
2. Japan and Finland with a Shared Design Culture
3. Saarinen Under Threat
No comment]]> http://www.lewism.org/2009/03/21/new-finnish-embassy-in-japan/feed/ 0 http://www.lewism.org/2009/03/12/dynamic-helsinki-website/ http://www.lewism.org/2009/03/12/dynamic-helsinki-website/#comments Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:35:49 +0000 lewism http://www.lewism.org/?p=1094

The international real estate industry will gather in Cannes, March 10-13 for the MIPIM fair, I’d imagine it will be a sombre affair taking place as it is agaisnt a backdrop of a projected world recession. But Greater Helsinki is bringing an exhibition stand there and it is a historic time for the city as the largest change in Helsinkis’ structure is going on now. When the cargo ports were transferred in 2008 from the city centre to Vuosaari, some 250 hectares of waterfront area were vacated, and here Helsinki will  build 4,5 million floor sqm for housing and almost 2,5 million floor sqm of commercial space. This means homes for about 100 000 people and jobs for tens of thousands. Six urban development projects will be on display at MIPIM. They are Jätkäsaari, Kruunuvuorenranta, Kalasatama, Arabianranta, Finlandiapark and Pasila, and there is website that covers them called Dynamic Helsinki and you can download the pdf brochure too.

Taken seperately most of these urban projects detailed would be a little uninspiring but together they form a coherent whole which has shortcomings but I think acts as a good basic blueprint for modern urbanisation as opposed to the indiscreet suburbanisation that we see mostly in Helsinki. However against the backdrop of what will probably turn into the first great world depression, it is hard to see at the moment how this vision will be achieved. No doubt the general urbanisation seen in Finland since WWII and continuing since may actually accelerate as Finlands’ traditional industries like the paper and timber industry continue to shrink. This means that the plans for greater Helsinki may not be affected much even as smaller towns and cities in Finland bear the brunt of the economic pain.

Regardless the marketing of dynamic helsinki of which Richard Florida would no doubt approve has started to take place. I’m partially optimistic the vision is achieveable even if we are yet to see the pain first.

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No comment]]> http://www.lewism.org/2009/03/12/dynamic-helsinki-website/feed/ 0 http://www.lewism.org/2009/03/11/no-new-building-in-finland/ http://www.lewism.org/2009/03/11/no-new-building-in-finland/#comments Wed, 11 Mar 2009 18:28:22 +0000 lewism http://www.lewism.org/?p=1091
• Fortress Finland
]]> No new private apartment building projects were started in Helsinki , and the equivalent of only three apartment blocks in the whole of Finland were begun between October last year and February this year according to HS.  There is a cold wind blowing so button up!

Related posts:

1. Fortress Finland
3 comments]]> http://www.lewism.org/2009/03/11/no-new-building-in-finland/feed/ 3 http://www.lewism.org/2009/03/10/bad-british-architecture/ http://www.lewism.org/2009/03/10/bad-british-architecture/#comments Tue, 10 Mar 2009 18:20:46 +0000 lewism http://www.lewism.org/?p=1086
• Finding Architecture
• Audible Architecture
]]> Bad British Architecture a new blog saying things that need to be said, really rudely, a new must read.

I hate how noone ever talks about how bad British architecture really is. I hate the bastards who make these buildings. So here I am, taking the piss out of them.

Related posts:

1. Finding Architecture
2. Audible Architecture
No comment]]> http://www.lewism.org/2009/03/10/bad-british-architecture/feed/ 0 http://www.lewism.org/2009/03/06/simulated-ice-field/ http://www.lewism.org/2009/03/06/simulated-ice-field/#comments Fri, 06 Mar 2009 18:29:37 +0000 lewism http://www.lewism.org/?p=1066

Korkeasaari the island that is Helsinki Zoo the most northerly zoo in the world has made a very ambitious 100 million euro redevelopment plan designed by Beckmann-N’Thepe who have a great track record of innovative zoo design. Just look at their simulated environment for Vincennes, France. The photos show a kind of simulated ice field or  glacier, and while it could be seen as a little bit of a cliche to design the thing like a giant piece of ice in Finland we haven’t got one of those yet so why not?  The interior shots are particularly enticing. Oh and I love the idea of putting a cablecar from the shore over to the island they should put a whole system of those around in Helsinki. All Images by B N’T. (via)

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• Map: http://www.lewism.org/?p=1002
  

  
  

  Ola Kolehmainen, member of the Helsinki School a loose collective of artists, has an exhibition on at Kiasma at the moment. His work consists of heavily cropped photos of Modern Architecture, that instantly abstracts them and concentrates the qualities of space, light and surface. What I like about the pictures in particular is that by forcing an abstracted view on the you Ola reveals details you wouldn’t otherwise see.

  Click on the above image for a slideshow. (All photos are from Kiasma website and copyright Ola Kolehmainen.) A building is not a building at Kiasma 26.02.2009 – 26.04.2009

  No related posts.

  No comment]]> http://www.lewism.org/2009/03/04/ola-kolehmainen-at-kiasma/feed/ 0 http://www.lewism.org/2009/02/27/how-to-design/ http://www.lewism.org/2009/02/27/how-to-design/#comments Fri, 27 Feb 2009 18:20:47 +0000 lewism http://www.lewism.org/?p=1016
• Design District Helsinki
• Reconsidering Eero
• Finnish Architecture and Design Websites A List
]]>

Always design a thing by considering it in its next largest context…a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan. Eliel Saarinen

Related posts:

1. Design District Helsinki
2. Reconsidering Eero
3. Finnish Architecture and Design Websites A List
One comment]]> http://www.lewism.org/2009/02/27/how-to-design/feed/ 1 http://www.lewism.org/2009/02/20/goodbye-dubai-hello-dubai/ http://www.lewism.org/2009/02/20/goodbye-dubai-hello-dubai/#comments Fri, 20 Feb 2009 17:45:06 +0000 lewism http://www.lewism.org/?p=996
• Goodbye Kurt
• Site Change
]]> A fantastic rant against Dubai and an eloquant rebuttal ( it’s along time since I’ve read such good comments on a blog post).

Related posts:

1. Goodbye Kurt
2. Site Change
3 comments]]> http://www.lewism.org/2009/02/20/goodbye-dubai-hello-dubai/feed/ 3 http://www.lewism.org/2009/02/10/genetic-map-of-europe-2/ http://www.lewism.org/2009/02/10/genetic-map-of-europe-2/#comments Tue, 10 Feb 2009 18:22:25 +0000 lewism http://www.lewism.org/?p=892
• Genetic Map of Europe
]]>

Another map and model of predicting where a person will come from in europe based on his genetics.(via) It is only based on common variations and not rare ones so the chances are that the map can be made more accurate in the future at least until the genetic pool gets more mixed up with the increasingly common sight of mixed nationality marriages (even in Finland!).

Related posts:

1. Genetic Map of Europe
No comment]]> http://www.lewism.org/2009/02/10/genetic-map-of-europe-2/feed/ 0 http://www.lewism.org/2009/02/06/tegnestuen-vandkunsten-win-alvar-aalto-medal/ http://www.lewism.org/2009/02/06/tegnestuen-vandkunsten-win-alvar-aalto-medal/#comments Fri, 06 Feb 2009 10:08:26 +0000 lewism http://www.lewism.org/?p=971
• Alvar Aalto through the eyes of Shigeru Ban
• Aalto Database
• Aalto University
]]> The tenth Alvar Aalto Medal was awarded to the Danish architectural practice Tegnestuen Vandkunsten on 03.02.2009. I took a few photos of their conversion of a torpedo factory a little while ago. (via)

Related posts:

1. Alvar Aalto through the eyes of Shigeru Ban
2. Aalto Database
3. Aalto University
No comment]]> http://www.lewism.org/2009/02/06/tegnestuen-vandkunsten-win-alvar-aalto-medal/feed/ 0 55.6789932 12.6054382 http://www.lewism.org/2009/02/04/the-ghost-map-by-steven-johnson/ http://www.lewism.org/2009/02/04/the-ghost-map-by-steven-johnson/#comments Wed, 04 Feb 2009 10:10:12 +0000 lewism http://www.lewism.org/?p=901 The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson
Amazon.com | uk
Compare a bacteria with a human, with a city, with the planet. Weave in two personal stories and the clash of ideas and of the inherrant messiness of progress, and you may get the outline of this book. The Ghost Map is at once a real map, but also a metaphor for progress, for navigation of the future using the past. The scale at which this book is written jumps all the time and could have collapsed in on itself because it constantly pans and zooms through its subject matter, yet it always stays focused and gripping.

The books main story are the events around an outbreak of Cholera in London in 1854 around Broad Street, Soho. Two very different people, John Snow and Henry Whitehead, became entangled in the outbreak and eventually through their efforts the battle against Cholera was won, mega cities became possible and the foundations for modern epidemiology were laid. But to sum it up thus would be to rob this book of its layered approach and the way it branches out to touch on lots of other subjects.

(...)
Read the rest of The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson (461 words)

• Map: #
One comment]]> http://www.lewism.org/2009/02/04/the-ghost-map-by-steven-johnson/feed/ 1 51.5140457 -0.1367930 http://www.lewism.org/2009/02/03/learning-and-drawing/ http://www.lewism.org/2009/02/03/learning-and-drawing/#comments Tue, 03 Feb 2009 17:43:48 +0000 lewism http://www.lewism.org/?p=951
• Learning Finnish # 2
• Learning Finnish
• Playing & Learning
]]>

Drawing itself is a part of learning: learning to use one’s eyes to see more intensely -Henry Moore (via)

Related posts:

1. Learning Finnish # 2
2. Learning Finnish
3. Playing & Learning
No comment]]> http://www.lewism.org/2009/02/03/learning-and-drawing/feed/ 0 http://www.lewism.org/2009/01/30/jump-london/ http://www.lewism.org/2009/01/30/jump-london/#comments Fri, 30 Jan 2009 10:17:08 +0000 lewism http://www.lewism.org/?p=931
• Holmenkollen Ski Jump
]]> A documentary of Sebastien Foucan the originator of parkour or free running jumping London. (via)

Related posts:

1. Holmenkollen Ski Jump
No comment]]> http://www.lewism.org/2009/01/30/jump-london/feed/ 0 http://www.lewism.org/2009/01/28/snow-angels/ http://www.lewism.org/2009/01/28/snow-angels/#comments Wed, 28 Jan 2009 18:50:49 +0000 lewism http://www.lewism.org/?p=907

We went up to Levi in Lapland last weekend. Being in the last great European wilderness was breathtaking, it’s a beautiful place a different world away from the bustle of typical human existence.

The thing though that will stick most in my mind most was when we were just outside the hotel lobby on the town square and saw a couple in their mid-thirties. The woman was lying in the snow making a snow angel and the man was taking photos of her. They were smiling and laughing in a state of innocent excitement I’m not used to seeing in adults. It made me smile, it makes me smile every time I think about it actually. The man told us they were from South Africa and had never seen snow before. Photos of the trip are here. The photo above is of  St.Marias’ Chapel bell tower beside the ski slope.

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• Map: #
One comment]]> http://www.lewism.org/2009/01/28/snow-angels/feed/ 1 67.8251953 24.7944260 http://www.lewism.org/2009/01/23/white-paint/ http://www.lewism.org/2009/01/23/white-paint/#comments Fri, 23 Jan 2009 18:24:20 +0000 lewism http://www.lewism.org/?p=904
• White Death by Robert Edwards
• Buildings to Suit your Mood
]]> Could the answer to global warming be white paint? I’m really partial to this idea but also a little worried it’s a bit like the ‘if we all jumped off the ground at the same time’ thing.

Related posts:

1. White Death by Robert Edwards
2. Buildings to Suit your Mood
3 comments]]> http://www.lewism.org/2009/01/23/white-paint/feed/ 3 http://www.lewism.org/2009/01/22/holmenkollen-ski-jump/ http://www.lewism.org/2009/01/22/holmenkollen-ski-jump/#comments Thu, 22 Jan 2009 14:17:40 +0000 lewism http://www.lewism.org/?p=863
• Oslo Ski Jump Winner
• Oslo Ski Jump Push Needed
]]>






Holmenkollen Ski Jump by JDS Architects is very much alive and onsite. I previously reported the project was in trouble. But it should be ready for 2011. (via)

Click on inmage above for slideshow of the latest renders.

Related posts:

1. Oslo Ski Jump Winner
2. Oslo Ski Jump Push Needed
• Map: #
No comment]]> http://www.lewism.org/2009/01/22/holmenkollen-ski-jump/feed/ 0 59.9642944 10.6669092 http://www.lewism.org/2009/01/21/renewable-energy-and-housing/ http://www.lewism.org/2009/01/21/renewable-energy-and-housing/#comments Wed, 21 Jan 2009 18:56:04 +0000 lewism http://www.lewism.org/?p=812
• Energy Awareness Visualisations
• Housing Prototypes
]]>

I’m actively trying to seek out new information about designing as environmentally sustainable buildings and systems as possible so I dug up something I’d tagged a long time ago meaning to write it up but somehow never managed to do until now.

The Vaasa Housing Fair which ran from 11.07.08 to 10.08.08 last year is very interesting because it put  sustainable living at the top of it’s agenda. The housing fair consisted of  3 blocks of flats and many detached and semi-detached houses, and was almost entirely self sufficient in power and heating using two key strategies.

The first was that of a heat pump system linked to a set of seabed pipes which help to heat the houses in winter and cool them in summer.

The average temperature of the sediment at a depth of a couple of metres was measured at 8-9°C, even in the middle of winter. This was twice as high compared with sediments on dry land. The seabed sediment stores the sun’s warmth efficiently, thanks to its composition and the body of water on top of it…. In the summer, the devised system can be used conversely to cool down buildings.



The second is  an energy plant for the new housing that is the first SOFC fuel cell power plant in the world and it is powered by methane gas from an nearby rubbish dump. 30% of the energy from the plant is converted into electricity and some 60% into heat. Wärtsilä the company that makes the new system hope to be selling them on the market by 2010.

• Vassa Housing Fair
• SOFC Powercell info
• HS Article
• map of site

Related posts:

1. Energy Awareness Visualisations
2. Housing Prototypes
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One comment]]> http://www.lewism.org/2009/01/21/renewable-energy-and-housing/feed/ 1 63.0750618 21.6466713