Where is the centre of Helsinki anyway? Hesingin Sanomat does a quick study to find out. Speaking for myself before I lived here it was under the Stokmann clock. But if I had to choose a single place to stand now the decision would be harder, you would probably see me walking round in circles [...]
Category Archives: Urban Design
Delirious Helsinki
13 Mar 06
How do we consume the city? The city street is a place of action and interaction and hidden meanings and signs. Part of the beauty of the street is the history and art there is to read like a book but which is mostly ignored by the passer by. Anyone who has read Baudelaire or [...]
Lifestyle Park
13 Mar 06
Espoo may be getting a spa,hotel, movie centre, multipurpose arena, and 270m long indoor ski-centre in one if Evata can get the backing for this scheme. Another mega-commercial project around the outskirts of Helsinki. See the helsingin sanomat article .
NAI for New Orleans
21 Feb 06
The NAI has an exhibition on now about the New Orleans flooding in which 6 design studios collaborated to propose ideas for the rebuilding of new orleans . They were MVRDV , UN Studio, West 8, Huff + Gooden Architects, Morphosis, Hargreaves Associates. They also seems to have recently aquired the back cataloge of [...]
Helsinki Planning
19 Oct 05
Helsinki city planning departments english website has an interesting flash video covering the four current major urban building projects within the city at Arabia Waterfront, Pikku Huopalahti, Ruoholahti and Viikki. This gives a good overview of current urban strategy, architectural work and planning in the city. Planners are not my favourite profession exactly but [...]
Virtual Amsterdam
10 Oct 05
Arcam has a new (to me anyway) architectural map of Amsterdam online that you can browse and zoom. All part of the architectural guide which you can view as a timeline or search google style for architect, address or keyword in Amsterdam. Not bad, and perhaps a contributing factor to dutch architectures current strength. They [...]
density in cities
30 Aug 05
A wise old man once told me, if you’re looking for someone to have sex with, you live in the city; if you’ve got someone to have sex with, you live in the suburbs. Sometimes I think it may be as simple as that.
the article this quote is from is actually about density in cities [...]