World map spread out in Kamppi square
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By Olli Pohjanpalo
Scarcely had the rear-lights of the last buses disappeared out of sight on Sunday June 5th before the builders moved in to the open area behind Lasipalatsi ("The Glass Palace") that had served for years as Helsinki's long-distance bus terminal.
With the removal of the bus terminal to an underground site in the new Kamppi Center complex, the area has been opened up to two restaurant terraces and also to an extensive summer exhibition - Earth From Above - by the celebrated French photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand.
The exhibition, one of many currently on display in Europe and beyond, contains 120 large aerial images of different corners of the world. Upwards of 50 million people have seen it before it reached Helsinki.
"I want to play with contrasts", says architect Franck Minthe, who was working on Thursday to put the show up.
To make his point, he shows two images - Chernobyl from the air rubs shoulders with a view of an African village.
On Thursday afternoon, with all the lozenge-shaped boxes for the images in place, a 200 m² map of the world was rolled out and attached to the ground in the centre of the plaza.
The plastic-coated map was spread out in seven strips and fixed to the sides of the large dais on which it rests.
The map should be strong enough to take the feet of Helsinki residents and tourists alike who choose to walk on it. "It'll certainly hold up - it's been tested in dozens of countries", confirms Minthe.
The world map shows the places where Arthus-Bertrand's photos have been taken. The public are allowed to climb up and walk on the map, but only after shoes have been removed.
Søren Rud, one of the founders of exhibition organisers Earthmatters, has seen plenty of times how the map affects people. "They walk on it and talk and point, and remember all the places where they themselves have been."
Architect Minthe has placed the 120 photos around the map in the Glass Palace inner yard. They almost fill the entire space.
Rud has no fears that rain will hurt the images, as they are laminated. His colleague Stine Norden says that sticky fingers and people scrawling on the photos with pens are the biggest dangers - "...and ice-cream".
The exhibition opens on Friday and is free to the general public until September 18th as part of the Helsinki Festival.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 17.6.2005
More on this subject:
 Filming under a clear blue Helsinki sky
Links:
Yann Arthus-Bertrand
Helsinki Festival: Earth from Above
Earthmatters
OLLI POHJANPALO / Helsingin Sanomat
olli.pohjanpalo@hs.fi
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