Finland is still designed mainly for right-handed people of medium height
These are familiar enough situations for many: knees bang against the seat in front in buses and auditoriums, head hits the ceiling, items on the top shelf remain unpurchased.
”A young, mid-sized, right-handed, fit person with perfect ability to move and impeccable hearing, eyesight, and linguistic skills”, docent Nina Nevala, head of the Ergonomics and Usability team at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health lists the characteristics of a person equipped to cope in Finnish society.
“In Finland the environment has been designed as static and standardised. It does not bend or adapt to the size of a person.”
The height increase among Finns has been so rapid that the dimensioning and sizing of buildings, furniture, vehicles, tools, and clothes has effectively fallen off the wagon.
“The society has poorly managed to take into account the fact that people are getting progressively taller”, reckons doctor Markku Heliövaara of the National Public Health Institute.
Though the height increase seems to be abating now, its effects will be visible for a long time.
“In the future, of course even the elderly will be taller and fatter. As a whole, the Finns will increase in size”, Heliövaara says.
This is already manifested, for example, in the fact that coffins and the crematoria incinerators are start to seem a bit on the cramped side.
In industrial production, items are designed in such a way that they fit 90 per cent of the population.
With the present sizing this means that women should be between 156 and 176 centimetres and men between 169 and 189 centimetres tall.
Currently, the number of Finns falling outside these measurements, and for example blessed with big feet, is in the region of 750,000. The figure is on the rise.
When the hearing- vision-, and movement-impaired individuals combined with the left-handed and other “unfit” people are included, the total figure is in the millions.
According to the Building Information Foundation (RTS) Director General Matti Rautiola, in residential development the increase in height of the population has been taken into account, but not sufficiently.
“For example, the kitchen counters are presently at at height of 85-90 centimetres, which can be too high for many women and too low for some men.”
Deputy managing director Risto Rantanen, of Lahden Autokori, a Lahti-based coachwork company, says that he himself is “too tall” for buses and coaches.
“Sturdily-built men do not like to travel by bus, as they cannot fit comfortably into the seats.”
Representatives of various sides largely agree on the solution: more room for adjustment.
Rautiola, however, reckons that few developers are ready for the inevitable additional expenses.
Nevala of the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, in turn, believes that if the adjustment reserve became a standard this would help lower the cost.
For example only in the newest schools are there furiture items of varying or adjustable size.
"People, too, could be more vocal about the problems they encounter in this respect. It is everyone’s basic right to be able to function in one’s surroundings”, Nevala emphasises.
In addition to size and weight characteristics, roughly ten per cent of the population are left-handed, and they suffer from a whole host of difficulties of their own, most commonly in the location of items and in tools that they cannot use effectively.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 1.9.2008 - TODAY |
 Finland is still designed mainly for right-handed people of medium height |
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