Kampin Helmi Senior Housing · Finnish Architecture Navigator

Architect: Kirsti Sivén & Asko Takala Architects
Completion: 2016
Gross area: 7876 m²
Themes: Finnish Architecture Biennial Review 2018
Category: Residential buildings
Tags: block of flats concrete prefabrication senior citizens stone welfare

The cream-white housing complex for senior citizens with 93 rental apartments occupies its extremely difficult site with grace and elegance. Kirsti Sivén, Asko Takala and their team make an attractive mark on the townscape with delicate handling of the building volumes, calmly functional spatial design and unpretentious composition of the façades. The building is contemporary and site-specific while retaining an aura of familiarity.

Kampin Helmi was selected in the Finnish Architecture Biennial Review 2018. Extract from the jury report:

“The jury was impressed by the way in which the efficient building contributes to the urban context without sacrificing the good standard and practicality of the floor plans. Before the building was erected, the place had no identity of its own: the small plot rested on residual land fenced away from the neighbourhood by two arterial roads and the Baana bike line that carves through the city in an old railway shaft beneath street level. This location has a prominent position as a city boundary within a landscape of long, sweeping perspectives.”