Länsisatamankatu | Huttunen–Lipasti Architects

The Länsisatamankatu 23 housing project began as an invited architectural competition entry for the The Helsinki Housing Production Department in 2009. Huttunen-Lipasti-Pakkanen’s winning entry was called “Light House”, because the building promised to be a beacon-like structure for the new Jätkäsaari housing area. Jätkäsaari is an extension of downtown Helsinki  stretching out onto a peninsula formerly occupied by the Port of Helsinki. The initial design incorporated porous façade elements that sheltered the balconies of the apartments. The idea was to have one continuous pattern design on structurally independent panels of varying sizes. The square module of the pattern was derived directly from common steel reinforcement grid. White concrete was already the main exposed material of all exterior surfaces, but the use of fibre-reinforcement allowed for the comparatively lean dimensioning of the elements. Confident that the grid design was a worthy theme, we spread the use of the concrete “lace” elements onto the 10-storied part of the building facing the sea, market square and Länsisatamankatu street. This porous membrane works in two directions - filtering sunlight by day and the glow of illuminated apartments at night.  During the preconstruction phase, main contractor NCC Construction contacted Rieder. A challenging but ultimately rewarding structural and detailed design phase began.  All in all 374 elements were fabricated of 48 different variants. The utmost attention was paid to the various fixing techniques in order to suppress the apparent weight of the elements and retain the “lightness” of the design. Upon completion of installation, only one element was damaged during shipping. This near-perfect track record is due to proper packaging and handling through the logistic chain. Immaculately executed, the resulting effect of the lace elements on the building is an interplay of light and shadow, depth and surface, exposure and shelter that defies all preconceptions of the material concrete.