The plot, an island located in the southwest archipelago, inspires with its precious and sensitive nature, it’s exposed cliffs and wild vegetation. Determined to lose as little as possible, the building volume is carefully divided into a series of dwellings propped on stilts along a trail, bridged together with terraces. The building is more a weaving wall reaching across the site, embracing and drawing the landscape into itself.
Art Sauna is a continuation of the emotional journey that the Gösta Serlachius Museum offers visitors. The new construction, subtle, intimate and domestic in scale, joins the site and blends in with the scenario of dialogue between art, nature and architecture that it proposes.
Architecture practices Mendoza Partida (Héctor Mendoza, Mara Partida) and BAX Studio (Boris Bezan), winners in 2011 of the international competition organized by the Serlachius Foundation to extend its museum with the construction of the Gösta pavilion, have brought the logic and common sense they applied then to the new space. To this end, one of the main architectural principles in the design of Art Sauna involved integrating the building into the jpurney, merging it with the terrain and making it part of the landscape.
House J is situated on top of a high hill, on the edge of a single-family housing area. The architectural concept is based on the site: the building has a closed rear towards the North and East where the neighboring houses are, and it opens to the South and West, towards a natural forest. The house curves around an old pine tree, forming a lap with a sunny and sheltered courtyard. The free form and lush garden create a contrast to the rectangular building.
We design buildings and environments that increase wellbeing. When designing schools, it becomes exceptionally clear that we do not just create buildings but also the preconditions for activities, experiences, and encounters. Hankasalmi School Centre was designed to serve all inhabitants of Hankasalmi. The impressively sculptural building functions as an attractive landmark: the school is an inviting public building, a source of pride for the whole municipality.
Conversion of an old industrial hall into a multi-spatial office environment where a unique history, top-level expertise, and modern technology converge.
Strömberg Park is a culturally and historically valuable industrial milieu located in Vaasa, Finland. The construction of the area began in the 1940’s based on a town plan formulated by Alvar Aalto. Strömberg Park is for the most part owned by the global engineering company ABB.
The newly opened expansion of Helsinki Airport brings adventure and romance back to air travel. It also improves the functionality of the airport, built in multiple phases starting from the 50s. In 2016, the airport operator Finavia launched a design competition for the expansion and modification of terminal 2. The competition task included relocating the departures and arrivals halls to a new building so that the existing departures hall of terminal 2 could be turned into Schengen gate areas.
The 43,000 SqM departures and arrivals building comprises two distinct volumes; the first defined by its wooden ceiling, the second by its blue color. In addition to the departures and arrivals halls, the first volume contains a multimodal travel center, and the second the areas for security control, customs and baggage reclaim. As the new building connects directly to the old one, it follows the traditional logic of separating the flows of departing and arriving passengers onto different levels.
The best work environment in the Nordic region. The new Helsinki premises of CBRE, an internationally recognized company focused on work environments and real estate consulting, could have been nothing less.
When Fyra started to plan the facilities for their long-term partner the main idea was that the work can be fun and comfortable, but the space can still be distinguished and professional. The facilities are divided into an internal zone that is used only by employees and an external zone that acts as a showroom for various work environment solutions – a collaborative space for customers and partners that easily transforms into seminar or event use.
The Helsinki Olympic Stadium is a building with significant national value. It is a combination of the pure functionalist architecture of the 1930s and the external appearance of the 1952 Helsinki Olympics. For many Finns, the stadium symbolizes the dawn of a new era for the young nation. The stadium is a result of an open architectural competition held in the 1930s, won by architects Yrjö Lindegren and Toivo Jäntti.
Syvälahti Education Centre is a multipurpose building combining a comprehensive school, a day-care centre, a public library, a youth centre and a childcare guidance centre. All are under one twisting roof. The building serves nearly a thousand one to sixteen-year-old pupils. Verstas Architects designed a plan that reflects the new Finnish curriculum highlighting shared and multidisciplinary learning.
The building is approached from the south through a dense spruce forest, as the lake landscape slowly opens to the right on the east side. The spruce forest forms a natural and characteristic back wall for the construction site. It acts as a strong visual barrier along the western boundary of the plot, but also softens the place’s otherwise open sound landscape and adds a gentle, dark tone to it. At the beginning of the design, the plot was almost treeless and only one maple tree had to be removed to make room for the building. The rhythmic line of birches by the shore is an essential feature for the landscape opening from the interior of the house, and it also provides privacy when viewing the building from the lake. The steep stone embankment of the shore is repeated with the paving stones of the lower part of the house. The exact location of the building was largely determined by the views. The more north you move on the plot, the more the lake landscape opens, on the other hand the shortest distance to the shore was precisely determined. The old sauna by the shore had to be moved slightly in order to get the best view. Views have been sparingly opened towards the closest neighbor, located northwest, and towards the under-grown tree layer facing north, and the house is more enclosed in that direction. Instead of covering the large glass surfaces with interior curtains, a sun-blind was integrated into the outer surface of the wall structure, which does not allow heat radiation to enter, but allows views to the landscape to be enjoyed from inside the house.
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