Video Special – Attack of Killer Squirrels
The long-awaited video. It happened at the Open Air Museum.
Archive for Finland
Pilgrimage – Traditional Finnish Homes Open Air Museum
Jeff made it a point to see this place down after advise from John Gamble.
A real eye-opener after indulging in clean modern “Scandinavian” design all week. Lots of Viking-esque barns, farmhouses and water mills. Feels like Middle Earth.
Even taking into account malnutrition in the past, we couldn’t understand why all the beds were this small.
Suomenlinna Island – Helsinki’s Sea Fortress
One of the many fort walls going around the island’s weak points. The stone walls appeared to be at least three metres thick. No surprises it’s still standing after all those wars.
Oh yea, and that gate is a human powered drawbridge, with its doors lowered.
As I went around the island, I realised it’s truly an open museum. This place has artifacts from medieval forts (with moats and drawbridge) to WWII anti-aircraft guns.
Pilgrimage – KIASMA
This is also one to break the myth that I had flawless planning and execution in my pilgrimage. I didn’t premeditate this one. In fact, I didn’t even know we were walking by a Steven Holl building until Jeff pointed it out to me.
The Classic Steven Holl Stunt, a curved lightwell ramp. Looked huge from the outside but as you can see, it’s not that big inside. Which goes to show how design can easily affect perception of scale.
Wish I had a paper crown at this point.
Pilgrimage – Finlandia Hall
Panorama from the lake
On the other end of the scale, one of Aalto’s biggest civic buildings the Finlandia Hall. In fact, this is the only one finished building of an entire urban renewal scheme planned for Helsinki.
Up close, the famous 3cm Carrara marble slabs bending problems are much more apparent in real life.
Outside Art Installation made from Old Farming Equipment
The building still feels incredibly relevant despite its age. In fact, as time goes by I’m drawing more and more parallels – such as with Snøhetta’s opera house.
Pilgrimage – Alvar Aalto’s House and Studio
Jeff’s architectural mission is here, to experience Aalto’s work firsthand. His home and studio is a good place to start.
This is Alvar Aalto’s home and his first studio. His office is behind the door ahead, but he spends most of his time at the desk where I am standing.
His living room. A sliding door, also shown ahead in this picture, leads to the studio above but unlike what you see, it was closed for the whole duration of Aalto’s occupation at this house.
When they finally ran out of space, they built a much larger studio. Note the models and chairs, they are the original prototypes of the famous designs.
Jeff accidentally ran into his tomb. Pretty neat, I’m sure he designed it, I think there’s a lot of analogies on his tombstone you can draw to his principles and practice.
Helsinki – 23ºC is normal in summer?
As you can tell, this is a mightily cold place. Jeff kept reminding that we’re only 600 kilometres from the Arctic circle. The highway speed limits here are 120 km/h, it’s quite tempting to just drive there and back just to brag that you’ve been there.
But we held off our dreams of being chased by polar bears.
Vernacular Nordic/Scandinavian architecture does have a mystical quality, it remind me of Studio Ghibli’s work.
At their fish market (a real open air one, not like Sydney’s oversanitised one), they sell what they call Lapin food. Finland cuisine is, not exactly outstanding. Some stalls had signs trying to pass their rice creations off as “Finnish paella”. Pretty strange considering I was eating the real thing just days before in Barcelona.
This is their parliament, palace or government’s symbolic centre. Seeing this opposite the fish market makes you feel how cozy this country really is.
Here’s one for Benji Yap!!
This photo is taken at midnight (12am), could still see twilight.
Helsinki Airport
Nice, everything’s so clean and prim and proper this country. No time to document anything because we’re rushing for our flight. Will spend due effort on return leg of journey.
Bangkok to Helsinki
Much of this flight was spent sleeping. It was my first actual real sleep since Tuesday (had an all-nighter up to the flight, to finish something due next week).
Pretty uneventful except that we met a nice guy who showed us everything we wanted to know about Finland, including the locations of some Alvar Aalto stuff.
Oh yea! I also discovered that the proper way to say Helsinki is … HEL-SING-KEE … not HEL-ZIN-SKI ….
As in “What the HELL, you’re SINGing out of KEY“.
