international conference on the research of modern architecture
30 august - 1 september 2002 jyväskylä, finland
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AINO NISKANEN Arch M.A. Senior lecturer Helsinki university of Technology History of Architecture PL 1300 02150 ESPOO email: aino.niskanen @cc.hut.fi A Study of the Landscape and Urban Qualities of Pihlajamäki Suburb, Helsinki Plans for Pihlajamäki Pihlajamäki is a suburb 10 kilometres northeast of central Helsinki. It was built in the early 60's for 10.000 inhabitants, and has been called a dress rehearsal for the suburban construction of that decade. Pihlajamäki is the only Finnish Docomomo-listed residential area: it is valued, and yet endangered. Pihlajamäki is not Helsinki region's first suburb: it was preceded in the late 50's by some other suburbs in the same northeast direction, and by Tapiola in the west. Building suburbs resulted from a number of trends in the1960's: the urbanization of the whole country was taking place, for example, and the baby boom generation of the 1940's was growing up. A rising standard of life meant that the number of cars was growing strongly - one of the preconditions of building suburbs along the highways. On the whole, the role of traffic and commerce in both regional and town planning was growing: highway and metro planners, and the Chambers of Commerce, took a very active role in the regional planning of Helsinki. The building law of 1959 had created a planning system with three different obligatory stages: regional plan, general plan and town plan. Now, planning larger regional entities started. A new system for building suburbs developed: construction companies bought large land areas and acted in co-operation with banks and the municipality. The banks produced saving programmes for the future residents and took care of the marketing of the areas. The building companies were in charge of all building including municipal engineering and landscaping (which usually was overlooked) and gave the public building lots free to the municipalities. Theoretical backgrounds for building suburbs had already been developed: Otto I. Meurman, a professor for urban planning in Helsinki University of Technology, created, in the late 1940's, a suburb model in line with Anglo-Saxon ideas. In 1946, Heikki von Herzen wrote a pamphlet that set out a programme for the future forest town of Tapiola. Both Meurman and von Herzen featured neighbourhood units with residential buildings, a structured traffic net, housing near to nature and a separate centre with cultural and commercial facilities. Pihlajamäki was developed according to these models, which followed a biological analogy: a conglomeration of residential cells, each cell with a neighbourhood shop and an inner street. The shopping centre would be the heart of the whole area. The town plan for the suburb was created by architect Olli Kivinen, who, from 1960, was the successor of Meurman in HUT. The site chosen for Pihlajamäki was a hilly wood covered area rising from field plains that were almost entirely undeveloped. In Kivinen's first sketches, residential blocks formed groups on the highest parts of the area, whereas the lowlands between the hills were left for parks and children's playgrounds and nurseries. The shopping centre was placed near the entrance road in a deep valley that divided the area into two halves. Kivinen's town plan mixed low and very long apartment blocks with high towers. It reminded many of le Corbusier's visionary town plans of the 1920's. There was plenty of empty space between the buildings - Kivinen himself has spoken about Japanese influences. The town plan was approved in May 1959. Two large construction companies, SATO and HAKA - each with strong ties to different co-operative ideologies -made a deal for Pihlajamäki suburb: SATO would build the south-western, and Haka the north-eastern, part of the area. Pihlajamäki is built The HAKA part of Pihlajamäki was planned by KK Co-operative Office for Housing in close co-operation with Olli Kivinen. KK belonged to the same cooperative as HAKA. The area, planned by KK and built by HAKA, was completed in 1964. The main groups of buildings consist of long apartment blocks, three or four stories high, whose forms are slightly inclined to create large, half-open, V-forms. The long blocks all have one side with balconies and one side with long band windows. There is also a group of five eight-storey towers. The buildings are grouped in a way that creates a variety of views both inside the area and outside. The HAKA area is not as bravely modern as the SATO part, but is more colourful and has sheltered outdoor places. Also, the detailing has a higher quality. In 1959, the SATO building company arranged a planning competition for its area. This was won by Lauri Silvennoinen. His plan consisted of two groups of eight-storey towers and low, very long, four-storey blocks that formed outer walls for the area. From a distance, they seemed to form a substructure for the towers. Between the buildings, an open continuous space was created. The composition was bold in its large scale. Silvennoinen's winning entry reminded many of Viljo Revell's Blue Ribbon entry in the Housing Reform competition of 1953 - Revell had foreseen a system of building the apartment blocks with prefabricated concrete parts - his entry had been much ahead of its time. Silvennoinen was one of the few architects in the early 60's who were aware of the technical and aesthetic possibilities of prefabrication. SATO's part of Pihlajamäki was the first to have been built with large prefabricated concrete parts, the system being Swedish. Most of it was built between 1963 and 1965. When SATO's area was completed, many architects felt that finally the 1920's dream had come true: housing was (almost) produced like cars on a conveyer belt. It has often been mentioned that Silvennoinen had been an aviator in the Second World War and, during the planning phase, liked to take his co-workers on a flight over the area. Most of SATO's buildings also offered splendid views towards the south and Helsinki - turning their backs to the rest of the suburb. Aesthetically, the SATO area was a fulfilment of the ideas of its period: black and white photographs emphasize the graphic and sculptural qualities of the towers high on their hill and the length of the lower buildings. Here Mies van der Rohes slogan "less is more" seems to have come true. Some photographic views of the SATO area became icon-like and started to represent the whole suburb; they had been taken from the air or from below ground level. Nevertheless, a closer look at the SATO area from the ground reveals rather poor detailing and worn materials. In 1968, HAKA built the shopping centre designed by Kaija and HeikkiSiren. It is typical for its period: a one-storey high concrete building with a flat roof and covered mall. There were other shops, both bigger and smaller, as well as a post office, bank, pharmacy, dentist, and hairdresser. The shopping centre is at the traffic junction, but in early plans there was also a rail stop - the line was never built. There were several smaller shops in separate buildings throughout the area. On the fringe of Pihlajamäki, two schools were built in the 1960's. Pihlajamäki lives on: changes and pressures 1970-2000 After the 1960's, none of the buildings except the church were built according to the original town plan. Both the SATO and HAKA areas became more dense in the 1970's with the construction of groups of residential buildings near the dividing valley and, continuing into the 1990's, three high towers in the SATO area. The shopping centre was enlarged, and a church and new school were built in the 1970's. For most of the newer buildings, a poor quality of both building and architecture are typical. The entrance to Pihlajamäki area has been somewhat spoiled by the new buildings. Also, some of Pihlajamäki's "icons", Silvennoinen's high towers, for example, have not been sustained through time: the worn out concrete of the facades has been covered with corrugated plate. Many parts and materials have been changed: very few of the original windows, for example, remain intact. A big problem in the preservation of the original architecture is the three- and four-storey long buildings. Many inhabitants are old and there are no elevators. Some elevators have been installed on the outer walls, but the result is architecturally unsatisfactory. A better solution ought to be found rapidly. Pihlajamäki's singularity What is typical for its time, and what is unique in Pihlajamäki? Pihlajamäki was fully described and discussed in the journal Arkkitehti, and much admired by the profession. It became a model in its building technology and the rational planning of the flats. Nevertheless, its town plan and forms - white sculptural forms rising from the dark forest and a free grouping of residential buildings - were not repeated as such. Pihlajamäki seems to have been a sort of watershed: a climax for some 50's ideas, while, in the 1960's, a promise for the future in terms of speed and efficiency of building techniques. Advancing building techniques led very soon to another type of town plan for the suburbs: much more densely built areas, where the straight angled road-grids were planned to be efficient routes for the building cranes. The architect's role in the planners' group diminished: soon, he would only be able to choose from the prefabricated parts that were produced by the building firm. No wonder that "suburb" and "concrete" started to be abusive terms and few architects were interested in planning housing any more. The few successful examples that followed Pihlajamäki were different from its large scale and open spaces: for example, Kortepohja area in Jyväskylä (1964-69) was built on a small scale resembling earlier Finnish wooden towns. A study of the landscape and architectural values of Pihlajamäki Pihlajamäki has been analysed in several previous studies, while its town planning ideas have been analysed by Riitta Hurme; more generally, Finnish suburbs of the 60's, and the rationalization of modern society, have been described by Johanna Hankonen, while the building technology of the 60's has been researched by Erkki Mäkiö. A survey of the values and the state of preservation of Pihlajamäki's buildings was made in 2001 for the Helsinki City Planning Department by Hilkka Högström. Nevertheless the City Planning Department felt the need for a survey of the landscape and architectural qualities of Pihlajamäki. They wished to include it as a cultural historical preservation area in Helsinki's general plan of 2002. The landscape and architectural office of MOLINO Oy got the commission in early 2001 for a study of the planning ideas, realization, later development and future possibilities of Pihlajamäki. The study is focussed on the landscape (both natural and man-made), outdoor areas, and the relation of buildings to the landscape and each other - in other words, the focus is on space between buildings. One of the aims of the study is the evaluation of the qualities that Pihlajamäki had, and how they have survived. An aim was also to see into the future: what parts of the environment were especially endangered, what would be the probable changes in the future, and what recommendations could be given for the general plan? My role in the study has been to research the period background and aesthetic ideals, models and parallels which lie behind the town plan, building types and architectural forms. For example, structures in a very large scale, sculptural qualities of buildings, and minimalistic tendencies and empty space as ideals for the early 60's were studied. I will show some of these visual models and parallels for the Pihlajamäki area and its housing in my presentation. MAIN SOURCES Books and journals Arkkitehti -journal 1957-1968. Arkkitehti 4-571960 on the plans for Pihlajamäki, 10-11/1964 on the realization of Pihlajamäki Curtis, William J.R.: Le Corbusier, ideas and forms. Phaidon 198 Hankonen, Johanna: Lähiöt ja tehokkuuden yhteiskunta. Tampereen teknillinen korkeakoulu arkkitehtuurin osasto 1994.(dissertaion) Hurme, Riitta: Suomalainen lähiö Tapiolasta Pihlajamäkeen. Societas Scientiarum Fennica 1991. (dissertation) Mäkiö, Erkki: Kerrostalot 1960-1975. Rakennustieto Oy 1994. Högström, Hilkka: Pihlajamäen rakennusinventointi 2000 interviews: . a series of interviews on the 1960's architcture by Aino Niskanen: Juhani Pallasmaa 1999, Kristian Gullichsen 2000, Matti K. Mäkinen 2002 . interviews of Pihlajamäki's planners Erkki Juutilainen by Pekka Pakkala 1998. Sulo Savolainen by Pekka Pakkala 2001 and by MOLINO Oy 2002 « CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS |
