Building permit for Finland's tallest residential tower runs into trouble
The project to build the tallest residential tower in Finland has been stalled on details for some time already. The City of Helsinki Building Control Department is handling the building permit of the nearly 100-metre high tower again today, Tuesday. The current problem is to decide how many elevators will be needed in the 26-storey block, which will have 140 apartments.
The Building Control Department has been examining the plan at its meetings for a long time, as the tower will be a major landmark for Helsinki. Several statements have been sought, particularly as to how the project would fit in with the urban image of Helsinki.
Even the architects are upset, because the plan has undergone a major transformation. While the Danish architects Nielsen, Nielsen & Nielsen won the international architectural competition with their elegant tower in 1999, the authorities are now looking at a square-sided upright chocolate bar on their table.
In the winning proposal, the tower was fitted with a podium, which would house business premises on the two first floors, and with a sauna department and a cafe on the roof of the building. Moreover, a mushroom-like landing area for helicopters was to be built on the roof, too. All 140 apartments had breathaking views of the sea as well as apartment-wide balconies to the South.
The structure of the tower has been changed, resulting in a square shape to the building that also creates dark corridors inside. Moreover, the special features of the winning proposal have vanished.
According to Lauri Jääskeläinen of the Building Control Department, the building of a residential tower is more expensive than that of an ordinary house, and to make it less expensive, the department proposed adding more storeys. The City Planning Depatment could not approve of that, and they did not want to change the detailed plan, either.
Jääskeläinen regrets that the original idea of the combined business and residential building has vanished completely.
"The idea was to build a magnificent landmark that would enhance the image of Vuosaari and Helsinki. Now it seems to end up with the opposite", Jääskeläinen worries.
Even Prof. Jyrki Tasa, who was a member of the Jury of the architectural competition, has indicated that the current project has drifted far from the starting point.
"It is sad that architectural competitions fail in this way. The stagnant residential planning in Finland would have needed a foreign shake-up", argues Tasa.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 2.11.2004 - TODAY |
 Building permit for Finland's tallest residential tower runs into trouble |
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