When Kimmo Saharinen was a student, he heard about a great deal: If you sign up for an international mathematics competition, you can skip class to take the test.
“I just wanted to get out of Swedish class,” Saharinen laughs. “But I did really well and placed second in the district.”
Languages might not have been his thing, but mathematics was. Or, rather, engineering: using math to solve technical problems. His talent for creating and building things has led him through life, and now he is building things people have never seen before.
Building his own car and house
Allas Pool keeps some of its swimming pools open all winter.Photo: Bluet
“For my bachelor’s degree, I designed and built my own car,” Saharinen says. “I even had it licensed for road use. I don’t know if anyone else has ever done that in Finland.”
He received his Master of Science degree from the University of Oulu, where his thesis involved creating and patenting a paper machine. He worked in the forest industry before deciding to build houses.
“I wanted to do the whole thing – running the excavator; pouring the foundation; electricity; plumbing; HVAC; everything,” he says. “I borrowed ideas from how they build skyscrapers. I believe you can always find things to improve, so everything was a little bit different from standard.”
Inspiration from an exhaust pipe
Bluet designed a floating pool complex, viewed here during construction, for Inre Hamnen (Inner Harbour), a neighbourhood in Norrköping, Sweden. Photo: Bluet
“I met Kimmo because I was a realtor and sold his houses,” says Tytti Sirola, picking up the story. “Soon after I started working on floating construction, I heard clients wanting to build big floating platforms and audacious projects. No one knew how to do this, so I told them, ‘I know just the guy.’”
One project was Allas Pool (originally called Allas Sea Pool), a harbourside hospitality centre in Helsinki with conference rooms, restaurants and saunas. Swimming pools would be built on floating platforms. Yet how would a floating structure handle waves and ice? How would steel and concrete components work together? Where can you fit all the infrastructure – the electrical wires, the pumps and the tanks?
Saharinen was brought in to figure it all out.
“It was Night of the Arts, a big cultural event in Helsinki, but instead Kimmo was talking with executives about a piping problem,” Sirola says. “He got inspired by car exhaust pipes and thought of a solution. I don’t think a traditional engineer would have come up with such an innovative idea.”
Pools that float
For a hotel on the shore of Lake Como, Italy, Bluet made the world’s largest floating infinity pool, visible here beside the deck.Photo: Bluet
Allas Pool opened in 2016 and has been wildly successful. It is now a tourist attraction as well as a popular spot for locals. The casual observer might not notice the attention to detail in the platform.
“Hinges in the deck allow it to flex in the waves, the biggest of which come from the direction of the island fortress of Suomenlinna,” says Saharinen.
The platform can rise and descend by as much as two and a half metres in the tides. In addition, he says, “Water-filled pools exert 500 tonnes of force, so the structure must handle the stresses of filling and emptying the pools.”
Other developers were intrigued, so Saharinen and Sirola became two of the cofounders of Bluet Floating Solutions, a company specialised in creating floating leisure platforms. Sirola is the CEO and handles the business side, while Saharinen is the technical director.
From Italy to Iceland
These thermal spa pools float on a lake in Egillstaðir, Iceland.Photo: Bluet
“This is an entirely new sector,” Sirola says. “In some places around the world, the authorities don’t even know what permits to issue, because no one has ever done anything like this.”
Bluet has created floating houses, concert stages and sports fields. In 2024, they finished the world’s largest floating infinity pool for a hotel in Lake Como, Italy.
Both Saharinen and Sirola cite the floating thermal spa pools in Egillstaðir, Iceland, as a favourite project.
They also designed a floating habitat at Helsinki Zoo for a Saimaa ringed seal in need of rehabilitation. (Saimaa ringed seals are found only in eastern Finland and are gravely endangered, with a population of less than 500.)
There is high demand for floating structures, as space for waterfront development is limited. Saharinen hopes they can keep pushing the boundaries.
“I like challenges,” says Saharinen. “I would like to create a floating platform that can withstand a hurricane, such as in Puerto Rico, or maybe one in strong currents, like off of Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay.”
By David Cord, March 2025
