Mysteeri

Interesting tracks in Mellunmäki

Winter is fantastic time for detectives...

You can see has anyone left the house before you in the morning & figure out has it been a woman or a man, or perhaps a child with a toboggan or someone with a long tail. You can easily see how intoxicated your spouse was when arriving home judged based on the trail left behind...

You can also trick people believing in things; granny used to wear granpa's large rubber boots to make tracks in the deep snow on a narrow country road (in the middle of nowhere) - You might wonder, why was she in the middle of nowhere in my grandpa's boots... and the answer is: she lived in a small cottage alone... in the dark winter time she thought that the big steps would keep potential unwanted guests out of the estate. Soon after she was persuaded to move to the nearby town to live in her own flat (with running water, electricity & central heating).

Can you detect a rabbit hopping in the snow - How about the smaller tracks?

On top of the standard beautiful marks on the snow, one can not pass without noticing the yellow & brown tracks on white background. Unfortunately it kind of gets worse when the snow starts melting... but hopefully it's not time for that yet, although the first migrating birds have started to return to Finland... The winter has been fantastic; beautiful and snowy - perhaps Mr. Snow greets us at the end of the drive way for a bit longer?

Spies

Spies?

As the resident nerd technologically competent person I get to do exciting things for Hiiri (and actually although Konna may say otherwise I have to do the same for her too):

• Change lightbulbs & fuses
• Buy and change printer cartridges
• Reset the cable digibox when it falls over
• Get the TV off menu when the wrong button is pressed
• Upload/download photos from cameras & phones
• Install/update antivirus (and any other software) on her computer
• Put batteries in, and demonstrate the use of, any new piece of technology around the home

It also means that when Hiiri says to Konna 'Your cousin asks you can see their house on Google?', I realise that:

A) They are talking about Google Maps Street View (which is still fairly recent and hot topic of conversation around these parts);

B) Somehow Konna has never heard of it even though it was around causing controversy (yawn) in UK before we left;

C) I am going to have to show them how to use it in about 30 seconds time.

So after owning up to having already scouted my cycling route from here to town (as the Helsinki pictures seem to have been a summer afternoon) we set to 'visiting' said cousins house, Hiiri's childhood home (which is apparently a forest based on the view we could get), our current abode & Konna's childhood house (so Hiiri and Konna could complain about the owners leaving rubbish bags outside and not watering the plants). Then Konna hit on the bright idea of 'visiting' my Mum's home for Hiiri to see (as she has never visited... for real that is).

So I show the house ('Wow isn't it big and nice looking' says Hiiri to my momentary disbelief, forgetting she would not be used to the boring 60's English developer semi/detached suburban typology). Then I show my Junior school at the top of the road. Then the stereotypical english (red brick Oxford movement) spired church where my Mum is the verger. Where my Mum spends a lot of time... Where my Mum is standing outside the front door of the church apparently oblivious to the camera car... hello Mum!!

Night shift

"The Hour of the Wolf" is the hour between night and dawn. It is the hour when most people die. It is the hour when the sleepless are haunted by their deepest fear, when ghosts and demons are most powerful."

... It is also the hour when the flipping snow ploughs have a gathering underneath the bedroom window in order to take away the snow pushed aside the streets during the day.

Please let us know who has designed the piiping device activated by reversing - can it not be turned off during the hour of the wolf?

A shadowy flight into the dangerous world...

DH paperdoll via

What has DH got to do with Dipoli's concrete days that MD blogged about a few weeks ago?

You might think nothing - think again...

The first time I visited this congress centre designed by Pietiläs I had a longer queue in front of me and much more eager fellow visitors than on the day of the concrete. I was also much younger... This was in the 80's when Michael Knight - The Night Rider (DH) visited Dipoli & Jäähalli here in Helsinki.

I remember it like it was yesterday (parents to be warned: kids do remember things, so do not take them to see DH if he visits Finland again...).

DH had a black pilot jacket, small soft pink panther attached to his jacket lapel & his hairy chest was showing... Sadly I have to admit I haven't liked hairy men after that... Oh well...

I have lost the autograph I got too... hmmm...

Architecture Corner

A few things to cover this time out, and a bit long so I'll split into 3 posts below this one:

• Betonipäivää: Dipoli; Hämeenlinän arkisto; marte.marte
• Europan 10, in which we don't win
• Uusi seikkailu, or what have I been doing instead of writing blogs?

Betonipäivää

Dipoli - on a cold snowy day...

So after the 'wood day' in Lahti's timber-y Sibelius Hall last year we now had 'concrete day' last Thursday in the appropriately concrete-y Dipoli, on the TKK/Aalto university Oteniemi campus, designed by the Pietilä's in early-mid 60's. Dipoli, with it's crystalline, acute cornered, concrete base, and undulating exposed concrete roof shows off their still contemporary looking organo-modern style... although my eye was drawn to the awkward gap between walls and roof filled internally with fanned timber boards.

Hämeenlinnan Maakunta Arkisto via

We arrived in time for a classic example of how not to use powerpoint (put up the full rules of a competition, then read it all out. All. Ten. Slides. Zzzzzz). This was before the annual Betoni magazine award was made to the design and construction team for Hämeenlinnan Maakunta Arkisto (Provincial Archive) - with Heikkinen-Komonen as architects. The historic graphics printed on the concrete archive 'box' are no doubt what won it this prize, but it is a admirably clean and clear expression of the brief - public functions in a fully glazed ground floor, with concrete ark floating above, and brown, copper-clad administration box behind separated with a light filled circulation slot.

On a side note - why do all Finnish architects have English websites?

Haus Marte via

Anyway, we were really there for the main lecture, from Austrian architect's Marte.Marte, in which a German speaker was to talk in English to a room of (mainly) Finns. However despite that minor handicap a good presentation with beautiful graphics and photographs followed (although since they have published a glossy monograph recently you would expect so). Suiting the occasion Stefan Marte concentrated on their minimalist concrete 'shells' with frameless glazed openings - often based on pure square plans and over looking fabulous Rhine valley landscapes. But rammed earth, aluminium, corten steel and birch plywood all got a look in. Have a browse through their rather nice minimalist website (in German) - but notice you'll need to use the little arrow/triangle on the right of the image to cycle through the pictures (something that took me ages to figure out) - maybe a case of too minimal?

During the makkara pasta buffet afterwards, (and influenced by pari lasia viiniä), Konna revealed to us the last time she had been to Dipoli... but I'll let her tell that story another time.

Dipoli also has a link with Europan 10, or at least our Tampere site, as this is where Reima and Reili Pietilä produced many of their major works; and were we saw the exhibition of their work - my first introduction to these important Finnish architects.

Europan

JM100: © MDD/JSK 2009 via Arkkitehdas

The author has created [a] somewhat general lay-out for the site. Despite of some positive goals the overall atmosphere and the details of the solution seem to look backwards rather that seek new solutions. There are some positive rhythmic ingredients in the repetition of the houses.

So, no, we didn't win.

If you remember way back to this post a year ago, you'll know that we were taking part in theEuropan 10 'young designers' (i.e. under-40's) competition with a proposal for the Tampere, Vuores site. That was submitted way back in July, and results were finally published this month (a day shy of a whole year since the official launch).

The winners (which you can see here - under Tulokset/Palkitutin or Eng/Results/Best Projects, and also the full jury report (in English) for both Finnish sites) were definitely a cut above our entry, so congratulations to them. We knew when we submitted that we hadn't cracked the important corner of the site, and we were never completely happy with the back edge... in fact only the terrace of houses mentioned we felt completely satisfied with. Maybe 'backward looking' terraced (row) housing is an British cultural trait coming out? More controversially, we think the winning entry (Scion) 'broke' the master plan slightly (although we may be misunderstanding the drawings), which we understood to be no-go (and had a big struggle with)... but I've heard it before - the trick is knowing which part of the brief to break to make the best competition entry.

You can see our full entry here (which gives away the next part of the post so read that first), and although damned with faint praise from the jury, it was at least categorized in the 'middle class' entries rather than the lower class. And I learnt a lot about Finnish housing, urban planning and drawing conventions in the process - which was really the main point of the exercise; that and it being my last chance to take part, as now that even as an Architect, I am no longer 'young'.