Finnish Parliament to undergo major renovations

Eight-year project will also require MPS move to underground bunker for six months

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A major 8-year renovation project is to be launched in the near future to repair the Finnish Parliament.
      In the course of the project, parliamentary plenary sessions will have to be held for six months in a temporary chamber located in the air-raid shelter under the building.
      The estimated budget for the entire project is approximately EUR 170 million.
     
Before the MPs can be evacuated to the temporary hall, the shelter itself will have to be renovated first.
      On Thursday, Helsingin Sanomat was granted permission to take pictures in the secret temporary chamber in the bomb-shelter.
      The hall offers just one speaker’s stand that will have to be used by all parties. The stand is equipped with the Statute Book of Finland as well as a Swedish-language code of laws.
      The bleak hall accommodates 200 chairs, plus four additional chairs for potential ministers who are not Members of Parliament.
     
The atmosphere gets even less hospitable on the floor below the temporary hall, which houses individual chambers for MPs, for use in time of national crisis. A bed for each MP is provided in rooms accommodating four people each.
      For example, the inhabitants of Room 121 will be Social Democrats Valto Koski, Lauri Kähkönen, Johannes Koskinen, and Esa Lahtela. The mattresses in this GDR-style room are rather dusty, but there are no signs of any activities that would have taken place after the parliamentary Christmas party.
     
Service will work well. Even at present, there is food and beverages for all MPs for two weeks.
      Parliament has made a contract for the provision of food and drink with Amica, the leading contract catering company in Finland, belonging to the Fazer Group.
      Ilona Nokela, the head of the parliamentary Real Estate Office, reported that the project will be launched in the northern wing of the Parliament building.
      The renovation will be supervised by the National Board of Antiquities, as in addition to the main building from the 1930s, even the extensions completed in the 1970s are all protected cultural-historically valuable properties.
      ”I wish to quote the Speaker of Parliament, who said that this is the largest piping renovation project in Finland”, said Nokela.
      The term putkiremontti, or "pipework renovation", is a familiar and dread one to anyone living in an apartment block hereabouts. It involves a good deal of discomfort and quite some costs for the shareholders in the condominium.
     
In the case of Parliament, all pipes covering an area of some 50,000 square metres have come to the end of their road.
      According to Nokela, the general public will notice the renovation when all the 46 stone steps leading to the Parliament building from the Mannerheimintie front entrance side have to be removed, as the concrete structure beneath them has been damaged.
      However, the 14 columns included in the main facade of the Parliament building will remain intact.
     
The Uusimaa labour protection district has already conducted its inspections in the Parliament building, reporting that a fairly large part of the premises will be removed from service already in the near future.


Links:
  Parliament of Finland
  National Board of Antiquities

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