British architect pleads: “Don’t spoil Helsinki!”
|
|
|
By Katri Kallionpää
“Where am I?”, asks British architecture critic Jonathan Glancey, 51, spreading his arms theatrically inside the Kamppi Center shopping mall in the centre of Helsinki.
“Am I in Shanghai? Or Hamburg? Or America?”
On the digital bus schedule display on the wall he looks at the names of places, ostensibly to determine where he is.
“This is anywhereish. Is this the Finland that has produced some of the world’s best architecture for hundreds of years?” he asks.
Jonathan Glancey is an architecture critic of the British newspaper The Guardian, who evaluated Helsinki’s new music centre for Helsingin Sanomat just under a month ago.
Glancey says that the centre, which carries the name A Mezza Voce (“In a Soft Voice”) is magnificent on the inside, but unexciting on the outside.
“It could be a corporate head office in any country”, he observed.
He also looks askance at bringing a Guggenheim art museum to Helsinki, noting that bringing one of those to Helsinki might add to the kind of architecture that is “dropped from a helicopter” and which does not grow out of the Finnish tradition.
We take a tour of the city. The route is planned by Glancey himself. After Kamppi he wants to see residential areas - the Eira shoreline, Ruoholahti, and Pikku-Huopalahti.
Perhaps he might find something there that he experienced the first time that he came to Helsinki at the age of 16.
Travelling by sea, the approach to Helsinki was an unforgettable sight. The city's skyline was in his view as impressive as that of Manhattan or the profile of Venice.
The Market Square, the Cathedral, the Palace Hotel. “They said to me ‘Helsinki’.”
Glancey heard the same word in his ears when he saw places like Lasipalatsi, the Olympic Stadium, or the Sokos building, which in his opinion was “like an ocean liner.”
We drive through Punavuori and Eira toward the seashore. Glancey notices the Eira Hospital on the corner of Tehtaankatu and Laivurinkatu. The building also said to him “Helsinki”.
The granite stone foundation makes the building look as if it had grown out of the ground. “Like a fairy tale castle”, Glancey says.
The art nouveau buildings are in Glancey’s opinion “joy, happiness, and pleasure from+ beginning to end, full of folklore themes and fairy-tale-like ornamentation. You can see that architects have built Helsinki.”
On the shore is the new Eiranranta development, which Glancey feels does not grow from the ground up. On the contrary, he says that the buildings look as if they had been dropped from a helicopter.
“Why haven’t they used imagination here, like they have in other parts of Eira?”
We arrive at the Ruoholahti canal, which is supposed to be “a different kind of boulevard, dominated by water and framed by trees”, as the main designer and architect, Professor Juhani Pallasmaa describes the area that was built in 1992-2002.
Glancey lets his gaze follow the shores of the canal.
On this windy Saturday in May the streets and the banks of the canal are deserted.
Only the Moomin and Little My balloons from the First of May celebrations, which are kept on someone's glazed balcony, give any indication that this is actually Finland.
“This is awful. Where are the people? Where is the imagination? Where are the small boutiques, cafés, and small businesses that would bring life to the area?” He asks.
“This could be an image on a computer screen. The area probably has been designed with the help of a computer programme, where the buildings can be added by pressing a button.”
Our next destination is Pikku-Huopalahti, which was built between 1986 and 2000.
Its pastel-coloured buildings are “like packages of biscuits”. The area is said to represent the “most far-reaching postmodernism that exists in Finland”.
Glancey says nothing about this. Instead, he admires the trees and rocks. “There are birds here. That is good. People cannot be happy without birds.”
There is village-like life on the streets. “But where is the centre of the village?” Glancey asks.
“When a person comes to a new village or city, he will naturally go to the centre. In an old city it is easily found near the centres of power - the church and the city hall. Has democracy eliminated centres as we know them?” Glancey smirks.
We ask a taxi driver to take us to the centre of Pikku-Huopalahti. After thinking for a moment, he drives to the edge of the neighbourhood, where a grocery store of the K-chain, a cash machine, and a local bar are located all in close proximity. It is the modern distribution of power.
Finally we take a look at the best that Helsinki has to offer. We examine Töölönlahti Bay from Mannerheimintie, between the new Music Centre and the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art.
We imagine what the area would look like if a new central library and the possible main building of the Aalto University were to be built there.
The vision is not to Glancey’s liking.
To him, such a Töölönlahti would be a “ghetto of cultural monuments”, “an architectural zoo”, or a “theme park of the arts”.
Instead, he would like to see a real, live city with streets, cafés, bookstores, galleries, and bars. A living environment might even save the Music Centre.
Isn’t Glancey satisfied with anything, then?
On the contrary: “I love Finnish architecture - especially when I’m attacking it.”
Glancey says that he evaluates architecture everywhere on the same basis.
“My mission is that every city, both London and Helsinki, should have its own identity.”
“I know quite well that this is a tough battle in a country where the pace of globalisation is accelerating all the time.”
He pleads that we do not turn Helsinki in to a city like all the others in the world.
“Please, don’t ruin Helsinki!”
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 12.6.2011
KATRI KALLIONPÄÄ / Helsingin Sanomat
katri.kallionpaa@hs.fi
|
| 14.6.2011 - THIS WEEK |
 British architect pleads: “Don’t spoil Helsinki!” |
|
