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)
Timber Construction
Certainly Housing Construction in Finland has a few characteristics that most definitely don’t set it apart from other countries. It is conservative, standardised and utilises prefabrication and concrete to a large degree. Some things are harder to change than others but one thing that just might be changing for the better is in the replacement with much of the concrete with timber.
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.
Futuro 001
The first Futuro house ever made (of 100 and only 4 left in Finland) has just been bought by the WeeGee gallery in Espoo so it’s future is probably secure. Great news for this Finnish and Architectural icon. If you haven’t heard of the Futuro yet where have you been? It’s THE 60′s UFO house designed by Finnish Architect Matti Suuronen.
- Anna-Maija Kuitunen wrote a thesis about it.
- Check out the Futuro pool on flickr and article in wikipedia.
- WeeGee news post
Timber Construction in Finland
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.
It’s been long expected, but finally announced, there will be an international competition to design Helsinki Library beginning of 2012. The site is in Töölönlahti, in the area between the Makasiinipuisto park and the Töölönlahdenkatu street.
update: there is now a website to keep everyone updated about the project. Not to mention Facebook page and twitter feed.
The Future History of the Arctic
The Future History of the Arctic by Charles Emerson (amazon.uk.com)
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.
A Real Eco City of the Future
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.
Paris Post-it Wars
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.
Guggenheim Redux
A couple of bloggers I follow report on last weeks interview in HS about the Guggenheim proposal in Helsinki. JHJ & Arkkivahti. Following on from my post about the Guggenheim, its clear that the city are serious. But if I was to make a crazy guess it would be that the Katajanokka site, important and controversial as it is, is part of the leverage that the city will make to get the funding it needs. World class site , world class client….needs world class funding.
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.
Finnish Wine
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)
101 Things I learned in Architecture School
101 Things I learned in Architecture School by Matthew Frederick. (Amazon .co.uk / .com)
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.
Continue reading 101 Things I learned in Architecture School
Soulreasons
I have been helping my Dad set up his own blog. It’s called soulreasons. Drop by to read writings on consciousness and other phiosophical issues.
Summer Listings
So I’m about to go on holiday for a month and with about 30 half finished posts, 3 or 4 half read books at home and a partially updated website, this is all par for the course so I’m not going to worry about updating anything in particular (also par for the course).
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.
Serlachius Competition Results
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.
Conformity and Experimentation in Architecture some notes
Three weeks ago I attended my office Spring day at the Dipoli1 building in Otaniemi. It was my first time visiting this slightly less well known Finnish design classic. At the time it was built it was apparently controversial and a ‘brave’ building. I couldn’t really see it form the outside. It has a kind of Elementalism a raw natural aesthetic of rock and tree cover, at least that was my interpretation. Something maybe between Brutalism and Romanticism where you can see these ideas, cross over to good effect. Anyone even vaguely familiar with Finland will realise these are themes played out in public and private in Finnish society and their art and as such it’s really nice to see them so clearly referenced and effected in a building.
Continue reading Conformity and Experimentation in Architecture some notes
Helsinki is 1st in July/Aug Monocle Magazines most liveable city survey (see video) but 13th in ECA most expensive city survey.
Update: and there is alot in Monocles weekly podcast about Helsinki, including an interview with Dan Hill of Sitra.