Postipuisto’s Parking Building
“Kauramoottori” *
The idea of our entry to Kauramoottori architectural competition was a creation of a distinctive-looking building in the northeast corner of the densely built Postipuisto area. The colour and design language of the vertical facade slats take their inspiration from the agricultural history of the area, the Frederiksberg and Böle farms, their working horses and the characteristically tied bundles of dried oats that were fed to the horses.
Fan-shaped facade slats are evocative of the surrounding landscape and paint a picture of rolling hills of wavy golden wheat, of freshly mowed fields with their endless shades of green, of red soil and the blue of evening skies onto the canvas of the rectangular building mass.
* a working horse, in Finnish informal jargon; literally “engine running on oats”
The building has a clear box-like shape theme within the urban landscape. The facade is divided into the slatted areas that are as high as the storeys of the building, thus connecting it to the scale of its neighbouring buildings. For the passers-by, the individual slats and their subtly changing colouring are changing the scale from big to human size.
The facade slats are turned away from the stairwells, thus forming a clearly closed-offsurface looking onto the turning point of Kollikatu street and the intersection of Metsäläntie and Veturitie roads. The entrances to the stairwells are marked with vertically grooved Umbra-treated concrete.
“Kauramoottori”
1st place for the competition proposal in the SR quality competition, 2019.
Location: Postipuisto area, Pasila, Helsinki
