Housing Reform, 2018

The Suburban Symphony

In the future, the Hakunila district will be known for its tram station, the continuum of its parks and the progressive way of understanding housing as a service and the city as a platform. In Hakunila, the city is the user interface for both the everyday life and celebrations as well as for work and business.

One of the challenges for the metropolitan area is the logic of suburban complementaryconstruction. Our competition proposal “The Suburban Symphony” creates a toolkit for implementing this complementary construction logic both in Hakunila and elsewhere. The starting point is a central street space as the new way of delineating borders of main streets and as a contrast to a continuum of suburban parks within the block structure.

The building masses delimiting the main streets and the outer edges form an urban, contained street space between the new blocks and shield the inner spaces from noise. On the block’s inside will be a more free-form, meandering and mesh-like spaces – a suburban park.

In the competition area, the four yards are connected by an internal pedestrian paths. All theyards are a part of one common courtyard space and each is themed differently. Functionswork better when centralised and concentrated in one place than when they are diffused and spread all over. On top of it, sharing activities engenders and promotes community spirit and socialising.

The suburban park, which will form the core of the area, will be connected to other parks and to the center of the area by light traffic connections. This is the way a closed-off block takes on a new form in suburban construction. On one hand, a limited, urban urban space will be created, mainly along the public transport backbone network, and on the other hand, a new type of vision of suburban parks will arise – that of the vital tissue that connects the buildings into one coherent whole.

The Suburban Symphony

1st place to competition proposal Suburban Symphony for a Vantaa location in the “Housing Reform 2018” open architecture competition

Location: Hakunila, Vantaa

Size: total of 80 00 gr sqm, of which 65 000 gr sqm housing as a service and 15 000 gr sqm business and communal spaces as a service  

Selaa muita hankkeitamme