Finnish Whiskey

Living in Finland and having previously written about Finnish Wine I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to write about Finnish Whiskey. You heard it right there may be a nascent Whiskey Industry hiding in the Finnish woods. Check out the Wikipedia page on Finnish Whiskey and you’ll see there are currently two producing Whiskeys. The two distilleries are Panimoravintola Beer Hunter’s and Teerenpeli Distillery.

Guggenheim Revisited

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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  1. It will be smaller than I thought cutting the cost from prohibitive to reachable. It clearly has the support of some of Finland’s top art players like Carl Gustaf Ehrnrooth who is both Finnish and on the Board of the Guggenheim. Two name just two things I missed first time around. [↩]

Kilden by ALA

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.

The Baana

Over two years ago I made a quick photo journal of my walk through a closed and disused piece of railway line going through the center of Helsinki which was due to be turned into a new cycle and pedestrian route. Well it will be opened this year (delayed or held back for WDC2012!) during the summer. It will be called Baana.

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.

 

Espoo Venice!

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.

Against Censorship

SOPA & PIPA are the sort of Bullshit censorship models we can do without on the internet. That’s why I went dark on the 18th January and thankfully they were defeated this time. Have a read of some background to the well thought out arguments as why we need to oppose these types of measures now and most likely in the future too is easy to find.

The Kindle as the Endless book

 

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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Schooling from two perspectives

A couple of links first about the Finnish School system in the Atlantic.

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.

Living Harbour

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.

Koolhaas Interview in Der Spiegel

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)

So long and thanks Christopher

Christopher Hitchens died yesterday. I happened on Hitchens slapping some inane point down, using almost verbatim the quote below.

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