When
British architecture critic Edwin Heathcote was a guest of Visit
Finland and Hotel Haven in Helsinki, he did not experience the city a
haven. He had a courage to reach an arms length to his hosts. It was
delightful to read good old architecture criticism.
Heathcotes´
Helsinki is a city of the good, the bad and the ugly. But the
emphasis in his tour is in the good ones. Almost a whole page in the
venerable Financial Times in January 2017 weekend edition attached
some public attention. Such as highbrows of ”Helsingi arhitektuur
inentiteedikriisis” by Kirke Ert in Postimees (Jan 16th, 2017) and
MTV Uutiset ”Financial Times: Helsinki kärsii
idetiteettikriisistä” (Jan 12th, 2017).
The
good
The
good is the Helsinki University Library Kaisa by Anttinen Oiva
Architects (2012): ”a skilful work of urban infill, which behind
its monumental brick parabolic arches creates a genuinely public
interior”.
The
”society that values libraries deeply and and, just as the UK is
shutting down its own, Finland is building a whole layer of new
spaces for books and learning”. The writer notes the new Helsinki
Central Library Oodi by ALA architects as ”a sinuous twisting shape
that will create another huge new public interior”.
According
to Heathcote, the library expected to open in 2018 ”envisages a
covered landscape for a type of building with a very open future”.
It will create a foil for its hulking neighbour, ”Helsinki´s
single experiment with global iconism” Steven Holl´s sculptural
Kiasma (1998) ”that now looks like what it is: a cultural
blockbuster from the last century”.
The
critic points to the heart of Finnish obsession, sauna. The Avanti
Architects´ ”faceted stealth sauna, Löyly in Hernesaari: An
embryonic attempt at the regeneration of a still-industrial dockside,
this little timber boarded building becomes a landscape in the
current fashionable vein of Oslo´s Opera House or Amada Levete´s
MAAT Museum in Lisbon, ridge on which to clamber up and observe the
sea rather than a conventional building block. It is an approach that
fits the social spaces here: the communal steam rooms, bars,
restaurant and open terraces wrapped into a sap smelling smoky
embrace”.
With
the floating pools the Allas by Huttunen Lipasti Pakkanen Architects”
The sauna, Finns´ default interior social space has become the
city´s social outdoor hub and a proxy public space.”
Edwin
Heathcote continues his tour of the good ones of Helsinki, The
Temppeliaukio Church (Timo and Tuomo Suomalainen, 1969) which
”intriguingly avoids the problem of style by refusing to have an
exterior” and Kamppi Chapel by K2S Architects (2012) has quickly
become a popular attraction ”yet its architecture is that of the
pure object, as much like something from an expo as a genuinely urban
place”.
Listing
the Academic bookstore, Finlandia concert hall and others the critic
sees Alvar Aalto´s long, beneficent shadow looming over it all.
The
bad
The
bad of Edwin Heathcotes´ Helsinki tour is the Guggenheim museum
which was voted down by city council in December 1st 2016. In it he
sees the city rejecting the chance to become a tourist destination.
Still, he thinks that the proposed design was quite modest by French
architects Moreau Kusunoki who had won the competition: ”quite
good, although wrongly sited”.
The
Guggenheim rejection could be read as ”austerity”, ”or as the
newest example of the public rejection of globalisation” or ”a
pointed rejection of the idea of an internationally franchised
blockbuster institutional architecture that has become almost de
rigueur for cities that aspire to
global status”. ”But Helsinki isn´t Abu Dhabi, even if, for a
European capital, it is a bit of a newcomer.”
What
lifted the observing eyebrows was notion by Heathcote in
Post-Guggenheim reality: ”But now the city seems to be experiencing
a bit of a crisis of identity. Architects are experimenting with
typologies, styles and materials and flamboyance in a manner rather
uncharacteristic of this otherwise conservative place. It makes for
an intriguing moment, one bristling with controversy and the electric
charge of change in which Guggenheim was only one single spark.”
The
ugly
According
to the Financial Times´ architecture critic there is one ugly spot
in low-rise city that recently sprouted its first tower. It is the
Clarion Hotel, ”a blandly generic block wrapped up in a randomly
generated facade, the quality of which should with luck, put the city
off building too many more”.
Heikki
Kastemaa
Edwin
Heathcote, Helsinki and its 100 years of quietude, The
Financial Times, Jan. 6th 2017.
