Finnish Architects PES, have beaten 3XN from Denmark, von Gerkan, Marg und Partner (GMP) from Germany, M.A.O. from Japan and Architecture-Studio from France to the new Wuxi Opera House. The project should be completed by 2010, I guess they want it ready for the Shanghai World Expo in 2010.
The Finnish Pavillion at the 1900 Paris World Fair has been recreated digitally by the Media Lab at the University of Art and Design Helsinki (TaiK). The building was drawn by architects Eliel Saarinen, Herman Gesellius, and Armas Lindgren.
Wearing circular polarization glasses and using a mouse the visitor is able to access a space created using stereoscopic a display. The virtual model of the pavilion can be examined both inside and outside. Spatial sounds make the experience feel real, as if one would be moving inside a historical building. Inside the pavilion model there are digital three-dimensional replicas of some artifacts that were exhibited in Paris.
You can visit the virtual reconstruction in Helsinki in Design Museum Fennofolk – New Nordic Oddity exhibition during 11 June – 28 September 2008. Makes me wonder if there is an Uncanny Valley for immersive 3d visualisations. Its a certainly a step up from the Recreation of Aalto’s 1939 Pavillion which seems now to be offline.
The Aalto University has been created in Helsinki. Made up of the current Helsinki University of Technology, the Helsinki School of Economics and the University of Art and Design, its doors will open August of 2009. Its quite big news because of the groupings these represent. Design, Technology and Economics meaning that policy makers in Finland clearly think that for Finland economically the way ahead is with technology based design in different disciplines.
Apart form being forward thinking to take this attitude, its of course a little controversial, how influential will the economics department be on the artists so to speak, and how well can they or should they integrate? I think there is probably a deeper underlying trend also and that is not only design as a key economic leader but that design and high technology are more and more integrated subconsciously into our daily lives and this is a common theme universally across disciplines.
I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by. -Douglas Adams
If everything’s under control, you’re going too slow. -Mario Andretti
Juha Ilionen a Finnish Architect has a website of 31 proposals for the centre of Helsinki. Living room Helsinki is all in Finnish but covers a series of different interventions into the fabric of the centre to improve it and create or add to existing public space with a variety of functions. Some are larger proposals and some are little vignettes which would add almost imperceptibly except for the very immediate residents around. Overall I love this series of proposals and hope and wish someone in the planning office in the city has the foresight to implement at least some of them.
The Norwegian Collection of Potential Architecture is beautiful idea about preserving and distributing the unrealised projects of Norweigian Architects. Like ruined Simulacra.
Archigram’s Walking Cities, Koolhaas’s Parc de la Villette, Mies van der Rohe’s Project for an Office Building in Friedrichstrasse in Berlin, Boullée’s Newton’s Cenotaph, Le Courbusier’s Contemporary City for Three Million Inhabitants and Sverre Fehn’s Royal Theatre in Copenhagen are all examples of unrealised projects that have influenced the world in different ways. Never built, but still representing significant contributions to the development of the discipline, of cities and of society.
Helsinki City Planning Department has a new public exhibition space, cafe and forum in the Centre of Helsinki called Laituri on Narinka square. The city which really boomed once after WWII is changing again over the next few years drastically and there are massive plans being made. This is a place where they can be shown, and debated which is really great, hopefully it can be a great forum for debate on the future of the city.
Every two years the Museum of Finnish Architecture (MFA) puts on an exhibition of the best 25 buildings by Finnish Architects over the previous two years. 0607 Started last week in Helsinki and is shortly opening in Paris in their Architecture centre also, but I have assembled a guide to each building in the exhibition just in case you aren’t in Helsinki or Paris this summer, or are in Finland and actually want to visit a building or two. Its a kml which you can download in google earth or view in google maps (see the links at the bottom of this post). I have visited some of the buildings already and thought to write a few words about it before I go.
Firstly I think its a fair reflection of where Finnish Architecture is today and the only building I know about and that I’m surprised is not in is the Kotilo or Seashell house by house by Olavi Koponen. Private houses and public competition lead schemes provide most of the best work with Sandels Cultural Centre by Juha Leiviskä being one that stands out for me in particular, maybe because I have visited it.
Housing is again the week link in the exhibition, and shows up I would say are major weaknesses in the housing market in Finland. Apartment blocks here really are basically terribly boring. Both the construction method which is universally precast elemental block design and the conceptualisation of these designs is monotonous in the extreme non of the invention and risk taking evident in Danish housing at the moment are on show here. Even a cursory look at 0607 and then the previous buildings published in the previous two exhibitions in 0504 and 0302 would show you that in this area Finnish design is stagnant, staid and doesn’t serve the public well at all. A notable exception is the Triadi apartments by Huttunen–Lipasti–Pakkanen architects, was it a private commission? - I’ll see if I can find out .
Also why not a proper website for this exhibition and the previous ones? If you want to market Finnish Architecture design to the world you must include this method. It was actually done better previously see Finland Bygger website which covers Finnish Architetcure between the years 1992-97 before this current bi-annual format was launched. This format is, I think, an excellent way to provide a continuously updating overview of the Architecture scene here, the missing exhibition website is a big oversight however if you want to push Finnish Architecture internationally.
The kml I have made is a network link so when I update locations and descriptions after I see the exhibition in person, the file will also update automatically, in the meantime I hope you find it interesting. I will also at some point soon add the previous two exhibitions to the file. It is also worth noting that at the moment Google Earth has surprisingly bad imaging outside of Helsinki. Tampere and Turku Finland’s next biggest cities and with populations approaching 200,000 have no good satelite data at all, please google I hope you can change this soon.
FINNISH ARCHITECTURE 0607 is at the MFA between (4.6.2008 - 28.9.2008)
0607KML (GoogleEarth network link)(Googlemaps)
In the last ten years nearly 200,000 Britons have emigrated away from the UK (including me!). I guess most of them have gone to the English speaking new world somewhere , but where should they have gone? Of course the answer is Iceland which is currently first in the UN index of human development making them the happiest people on earth. Finland is 11th just ahead of the USA at 12 and the UK at 16. But why Iceland, personally the weather would put me off, but quoting this guardian article there are some pretty strong reasons for making the case for Iceland;
It is the country with the sixth highest GDP per ca pita in the world; where people buy the most books; where life expectancy for men is the highest in the world, and not far behind for women; it’s the only country in Nato with no armed forces (they were banned 700 years ago); the highest ratio of mobile telephones to population; the fastest-expanding banking system in the world; rocketing export business; crystal-pure air; hot water delivered to all Icelandic households straight from the earth’s volcanic bowels; and so on and so forth.
So there you go plenty of reasons to move if you need them!
The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies has announced the winners of its annual trawl of Europe for this continents upcoming talent 40 under 40 2008.
Jørn Utzon is 90 years old this year and the Danish Architectural Press’s Architectural Magazine dk asked some Architects to send him a sketch greeting and they obliged. The result is dk 2008 02 a fantastic issue given over mostly to sketchs of Utzon’s some never seen before, and to sketches and letters to the Architect by other leading Architects, the issue I guess will be hard to get hold of for most people but arcspace has a small excert of some of them that is wonderful to look at. Someone has also put up a gallery of his work on flickr (via). So Jørn Utzon happy birthday and thank you.
