Pähkinäparkki

The site is located in Pähkinärinne, Vantaa, 150 m from the Vihdintie junction. It serves the block along Lammaslammentie, which includes three apartment buildings that have already been built and three that are still on the drawing board. The parking garage has 237 parking spaces.

The building has two significant façades defining the street space: one faces a dead-end street lined mainly with small houses, and the other a larger collector street. To the north and southeast, the plot borders on 1-2-story buildings, and to the south and northwest on an area of apartment buildings. The scale of the building steps down on the north side, mirroring the scale of the surrounding small houses.

Façades as part of the rhythm of the block

In line with the objectives of the local detailed plan, the building creates a high-quality, urban streetscape with gestures typical of the area’s culturally and historically valuable 1960s slab blocks. It respects the area’s predominantly red-brick color scheme and repeats the strong use of color, rhythm and articulation of the old slab blocks by modern means. The mass has been divided into smaller, residential-scale slices, avoiding the contrast in scale that so easily arises between residential buildings and parking garages.

In a style characteristic of the area, the façades are dominated by a strong weave of vertical and horizontal motifs. The brick surfaces echo the vertical brick motifs of the area’s older building stock, and the red, blue and white accent color fields mirror the rhythm and design language of the accent colors on the residential buildings. The façades are mainly brick and expanded metal mesh, which is given variety through different shades and orientations.