Why is there something rather than nothing? The answer is there had to be.
Wasted Space Helsinki
I went to Vaihtolava in Kallio on Wednesday evening to see some talks given by the Hukkatila Group which, inspired by wastedspace.se is looking for their own wasted space in Helsinki to turn into projects, whether it’s urban farming or setting up a cafe. The talkers last night were
- 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.
Barents Skyscraper
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)
European Green Belt
The european greenbelt initiative proposes protecting and encouraging nature in the zones along european borders which were along the old line of the iron curtain (roughly).
Posted in Environment 1 Comment
Georss and kml
I always loved pointingit, although it seems to have gone the way of many websites into a kind of coma, and have for some time been geotagging any relevant posts I do here. But I just never was satisfied with a way of showing them that didn’t take an age to load or was just a crap way of navigating the content.
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
Nordic Names
nordic names website will answer all your questions about what all those names mean. I particularly liked the entry for Smilla a name made up by Danish author Peter Høeg in the book Smilla’s Feeling for Snow and now being used in Sweden.
Broadband Access Legal Right in Finland
Finland will be the first ( or maybe second behind Switzerland) country in the world to have a broadband connection a legal right from summer of 2010. (via)
Moving Forward Looking Backward
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.
Subterranea Helsinki
Although a country with few people and plenty of space, Finlands’ capitol city Helsinki being located on a peninsula finds itself constantly constrained by the sea for space. Luckily the city sits above bedrock which is deep and which frequently punctures the ground. So Helsinki increasingly uses its bedrock to tunnel into and create an underground city. Now with over 400 documented underground facilities and 200 more planned, Subterranea Helsinki is probably one of the largest and most comprehensive underground city systems in the world for its size.
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:
References:
helsinki underground masterplan
My Helsinki Subterranea flickr set
Low2No Finalist Videos
A quick update on the low2no competition in Jätkäsaari, Helsinki. The finalists’ presentations have been posted on the low2no website. I won’t critisise here except to say they all meet the challenge of the brief in a provoking way, and are all worth watching in their differing styles.
- 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
This Gaming Life by Jim Rossignol
Its always good to start a book with a bang and This Gaming Life does just that.
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.
Posted in Books Leave a comment
David Byrnes’ Perfect City
A great article by David Byrne about his perfect 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)
Facade Projection
This is an amazing facade projection. The project was by Daniel Rossa and urbanscreen.com (via)
Posted in Asides Leave a comment
Finnish Architecture.fi
Finnish Architecture.fi website has had a revamp and had added some new and much needed content. Hopefully it will now stay abreast of Finnish architeture news and be updated regularly unlike the old site. But where are the rss feeds?
update: I checked back today (17.09.09) and they have a feed now. Nice work!
Glasgow Shed
I haven’t read a better or more direct and telling criticism of any building as Entschwindet und Vergehts’ review of Zaha Hadid’s Glasgow Museum of Transport for an awfully long time. It’s the sort of criticism which reminds me why we need Architecture bloggers who don’t have to scrape the floor to get copy. It also brings to mind Johnathan Meadess’ on the Bandwagon a film worth watching in this context.
Posted in Asides Tagged criticism, glasgow, johnathan meades, scotland, starchitect, zaha hadid 1 Comment
Blogdesign update
So inspired by a whole host of single column simple sites many on tumblr I updated my site mostly following the daily meh’s beautiful minimalism. As usual its a hash but doing it got in the way of posting articles so I’ll come back to the rough edges later when I get back into the blogging flow. It’s really really simple but I’ll be adding and tweeking it a little bit as I go hopefully adding some functionality along the way. Oh and it’s based on Thematic.