The Police Station of Kajaani was built in 1935 into the middle of a wooden housing block in the centre of Kajaani. The building represents 1930s Functionalism and is designed by Eino Pitkänen.

The architecture of the building is defined by a cube-like mass as well as wall surfaces that are decorated with straight, evenly situated window brands. The building still, however, carries some traces of the 1920s Classicism in the portal of the main façade’s entrance and in the meander decorations of the entrance hall.

The police station is a masonry building and its outer walls act as the loadbearing structure. This structure doesn’t allow broad window bands. Pitkänen realised the loadbearing column structure, common during Functionalism, into the same building block in 1938 in the printing house of Kainuun Sanomat.

The functions of the new police station were situated so that the technical spaces were in the basement and the janitor’s house, the cells and the management spaces were in the ground floor. The first floor was reserved for the management of the police as well as the officers. The first floor included office spaces as well as gymnastics and lecture halls.

The building is situated in the same block as the city’s oldest building, the Empire style Town Hall built in 1931. These two buildings blend in well from the perspective of the scale, the old and new meeting in a way that enriches the city scape.

Today the police station is occupied by the Kajaani Art Museum.

Text: Päivi Tervonen