Built by Finns - in Libya
Finnish construction companies have had a significant impact on the outward appearance of Libya before fighting broke out there this spring.
Finns have designed many familiar places appearing in news footage, including streets in the capital Tripoli as well as the entire oil city of Ras Lanuf.
A large number of Libyan architects have been trained with Finnish help.
Three specialists in the construction business tell about their experiences in Libya from the late 1970s to the early 1990s.
Tripoli’s transport plan 1977-1978
The last stronghold of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is the country’s capital Tripoli. As late as 2008 a shopping complex designed by Finns was being built there. Also of Finnish design is the city’s transport system Thanks to the traffic plan, Harri Leppänen was given the unique opportunity to fly above Tripoli in a small plane. From the plane he had a clear view of the military centre in the middle of the city secluded by massive walls. NATO planes have tried to bomb this military area during the spring.
“We were just starting the work, and we hired Egyptian students to count traffic. We accidentally placed them very close to the gates of the military base. The police soon came to get me and I ended up in the closed military zone along with them. The boys we had hired were being held in the back of a lorry, and they put me in there with them. After riding around in the night we found a colonel who spoke English who believed that we were not spies. We nevertheless had to sack the Egyptians that we had fired, because Egypt and Libya had very tense relations at the time. After that I had great problems in finding staff with any linguistic skills. Finally two young men appeared at our door who spoke English very well, which made us very happy. One of them worked with us for six months until we found out that he was a member of the security police who had been sent to spy on us.”
Harri Leppänen
Local director, Devecon , Lived in Libya for 3 years.
“For the public transport plan I asked the local transport office about bus timetables and route maps. They did not exist. I was told that there was no point in drawing them up because buses constantly had to change their routes because of bad road conditions. So we drove followed each bus in our car to get at least some kind of an indea of what roads they were using."
Pentti Murole
Shareholder Devecon, Lived in Libya for 10 years
The city of Ras Lanuf 1980-1986
About 50 kilometres of isolated sandy beach on the Gulf of Syrt is where an oil city of 40,000 people was to be built. The part of the city that accommodates 20,000 actually was built. The rest was to be built by the Libyans themselves, but it is not yet finished. As Ras Lanuf contains an important oil terminal, fighting over it was intense – especially in the early part of the war. At this writing the city is still under rebel control, but the security situation remains weak.
“The cornerstone of Ras Lanuf was laid by Muammar Gaddafi himself on June 11th, 1980. I thought for a long time whether or not to attend the ceremonies. Finally I recorded programming that came from Ras Lanuf the whole day. Diplomats and other civil servants had been ordered to show up at nine in the morning. They sweated there until Gaddari arrived at 5:00 PM. The television filled the empty air time with footage of the previous evening’s celebrations. In the evening Gaddafi held a speech whose main substance, according to the interpreter, was that Libya will no longer pursue dissidents who have fled abroad. I had all of this on videotape, but the cassette was stolen from our cellar in Helsinki."
Harri Leppänen
“The dwellings in Ras Lanuf had to be big – an average 160 square metres. This is because there are no one-person households in Libya. The elderly and unmarried siblings live under the same roof with the nuclear family. The living rooms had to be big so that the men of the village would fit in to hold meetings. Women and children needed space of their own. When bathrooms were built it was important that the toilets did not point toward Mecca.”
Pentti Murole
“The problem for the Finns was alcohol, which is not officially available in Libya. Contractors learned soon that it was beneficial to offer moonshine to the building supervisors. The Bulgarians especially were good distillers. When you knew where to look for it, you could get anything – even whisky.”
Pentti Murole
Benghazi Architecture School 1978 to the early 1990s
An architecture department was established at Garyounis Libya’s largest university, in Benghazi in the autumn of 1980. Libya was experiencing a major construction boom, and the country needed its own school of architecture and urban planning. Finns had established a reputation as designers of Ras Lanuf, for instance, and eyes turned to Finland and Jouko Koskinen, former director of the Helsinki School of Industrial Art. The department set up by Koskinen functioned until the 1990s, when it closed down because of financial problems.
“In the early stages of planning I thought at the building engineer department. The students had the same attitude as we have in the military: how many days are there left, and when can we get out. The quality of the students was also very weak. Difficulties included a poor knowledge of English and inadequate drawing skills. In spite of this each of them knew that they had a great job waiting for them. The teachers were mostly from poor countries like Pakistan and India, so they were easily browbeaten by their students. I was constantly asked Doctor please help me, asking to raise their grade so that they might reach the average grade that was required. I believe that we were successful in raising ambition for studies so that on the Friday Sabbath the students would get to the university to prepare their assignments.”
“I moved to Libya in November 1978 and I had a newspaper subscription delivered there. The first delivery came the following February, when I got all of the issues of Helsingin Sanomat that had appeared in the interim delivered to me, rolled up and clipped. One of the articles in the pile of papers said that Libya will become a moneyless society at the end of 1970. As I had lived in Libya for a while, and was used to all kinds of misinformation, I dismissed the news out of hand. I have often thought, however, that what would have happened if I had read the same news item on the plane.”
Jouko Koskinen
Worked in Libya first as a designer and later as the head of the architecture department in 1978-1982.
Syrt Congress Centre 1991-1996
The Syrt Congress Centre was supposed to fit 4,500 representatives of local tribal communities. They had no real powers, and the real reason that they gathered there was to listen to lengthy speeches by Muammar Gaddafi. The centre had an important symbolic meaning. As Syrt is where Gaddafi was born. Heavy fighting took place there in March and April. It is not known if the centre was damaged in the fighting.
“We brought move than 1.5 tonnes of drawings, folders, and drafts from Finland, vial Tunisia, to Libya for the Congress Centre. Customs officials wanted to open one box in a random check, and it was filled with stones. ‘What are these? You talked about drawings, and there are stones here’, the officials said with amazement. Naturally they were stones for the sauna oven, but it was hard for Tunisian customs officials to understand why it was necessary to bring more stones to Libya, and by plane. The Libyan border was no problem, because Gaddafi had had all buildings along the border razed to the ground.
Pentti Murole
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 12.6.2011
FACTFILE: Libya was second-largest recipient of Finnish construction exports in decades past
In the 1980s Libya was the second-largest country of export for the Finnish construction industry right after the Soviet Union.
In the early 1980s Finns had about 20 major construction projects in Libya.
Hundreds of Finns have worked in Libya.
Construction export became more difficult after the UN set up a trade embargo in 1992, and after the collapse in the price of oil.
In the 21st century trade relations began to recover.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 14.6.2011 - THIS WEEK |
 Built by Finns - in Libya |
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