The results of Europan9 in Finland are out. With three competition areas in Finland Kotka, Vantaa, and Espoo, it was the winner of the Espoo site which stood out for me as being able to create a real quality set of shoreline spaces without being twee or contrived. Clear connections to the existing infrastructure [...]
A new island forms the centrepiece of an expansion of the Otaniemi campus of Helsinki university in Espoo. The competition won by NRT Architects is for office and teaching space for 1500 people with a further 700 residences. Its a major addition adn improvement to the campus which already contains some world class Architecture.
In Finland few places make a worse case for Architecture or Urbanism as practised then Espoo City Centre. It was supposed to be a modern centre for the post war burgeoning metropolis of Espoo now the second biggest city on Finland. But lets be honest its an embarrassment really, an indictment of all that is [...]
The WeeGee building once a printworks reopens today in Tapiola as an cultural centre it has five museums, a modern art gallery, a media-art centre, a museum shop and cafe. Originally designed by Aarno Ruusuvuori its a Finnish Constructivist classic and now houses Espoo city museum. There is a flash guide of the original [...]
If you go to Helsinki this summer you can get a very good idea of the current state of Architecture and Design in Finland by going to three exhibitions. There is the the Asuntomessut (Housing Fair) in Espoo, the 0405 Architecture Exhibition at the Finnish Architecture Museum and at the Design museum there is [...]
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 .
Helsingin Sanomat plays catch up with me!They published an article about the new all timber finnforest office. Also see my post on it. As proof of concept and demonstration of Timber technology it is very good, however how many real advantages eco or not does it really have over current building practises?
This is now Europe’s tallest wooden office building (5 stories) by finnforest & Helin & Co. It is a building that basically showcases finnforests latest products basically a brochure in built form, which unfortuneately is all it seems to be. The interesting thing about this building is the structure, columns, beams even floor panels, as [...]
