Åland treasures maritime memories

Life & society Society

The greatly expanded Maritime Museum of Åland can be found in the town of Mariehamn. It represents a must-see for anyone interested in sea travel or the unique history of Finland’s autonomous Åland Islands.

Seafaring has naturally been central to the lives of the Åland islanders in their labyrinthine Baltic archipelago, located between mainland Finland and Sweden. “To understand Åland and its people you really have to look into our maritime history,” says museum director Hanna Hagmark-Cooper.

In the middle ages, islanders used to sail to Stockholm, Turku and Tallinn to sell surplus fish and buy goods they could not produce themselves. As the Baltic region industrialised, several major shipping companies grew up and thrived in Åland. “Mariehamn was the last port in the world to continue running a large fleet of sailing ships, even into the 1940s,” says Hagmark-Cooper. Åland’s maritime museum was first founded when local people realised that the great age of sail was coming to an end.

Putting the museum in ship shape

Old favourites such as well-preserved figureheads are still on display.Photo: Fran Weaver

“Over the decades people kindly brought more and more objects in, which were put on display with little planning,” says Hagmark-Cooper. “The museum became so cluttered that we clearly needed to expand and redesign the whole exhibition. “During reconstruction lasting more than two years, the museum has doubled in size and its exhibits have for the first time been systematically organised and labelled– in Finnish and English, as well as Swedish (Åland’s main language).

Hagmark-Cooper is particularly proud of the museum’s new interactive exhibits. Visitors can learn the ropes, climb replicated rigging, stand on a stern deck, lift dockside loads and use simulators to steer vessels into port. Kids clearly enjoy spying on the antics of Ruby the ship rat through peepholes around the museum.

“But our local visitors have been relieved to find old favourites such as model ships, our well-preserved figureheads and the beautiful captain’s saloon from the old sailing ship Herzogin Cecilie, all still here – and placed better in context,” says Hagmark-Cooper. “Nautical enthusiasts can also find a wealth of information using our library and e-info points.”

Eye-catching exhibits

Moored by the quayside outside the museum is the Pommern, a splendid four-masted sailing barque built in 1903.Photo: Fran Weaver

Moored by the quayside outside the museum is the Pommern, a splendid four-masted sailing barque built in 1903. Owned by Mariehamn-based shipping company Erikson in the 1930s, the Pommern twice won the annual Great Grain Races sailed by ships bringing wheat from Australia to Europe. Onboard exhibits and films give visitors a salty taste of a sailor’s life in bygone days.

Another striking part of the museum is a Cabinet of Curiosities containing exotic souvenirs brought by seafarers from distant ports. Exhibits include aboriginal boomerangs, an enormous stuffed albatross and a genuine skull-and-crossbones flag that flew over a fearsome pirate ship off the Barbary Coast in the 1700s.

A genuine skull-and-crossbones pirate ship flag from the 1700s.Photo: Maritime Museum of Åland

The museum also spotlights modern aspects of nautical life including maritime safety, war at sea and shipbuilding methods. In recent years sailing enthusiasts in Åland have built several wooden vessels using traditional local designs. Examples can be seen in Mariehamn’s Maritime Quarter by the town’s eastern harbour.

“In the museum we also want to show how the shipping industry is still vital for Åland’s economy today,” says Hagmark-Cooper. The huge cruise ferries that call at Mariehamn en route between Finland and Sweden combine necessity and luxury: giving Åland a vital link to the outside world, while also bringing in tourists on scenic archipelago cruises. Hagmark-Cooper hopes that up to 50,000 visitors a year will discover Åland’s colourful history and thriving nautical traditions in the newly opened museum

By Fran Weaver, June 2012, updated July 2014

Pedal power: Helsinki likes bikes

Life & society Sports

It’s healthy, it’s environmentally friendly and it’s cheap. More and more citizens and visitors in the Finnish capital are discovering the benefits of a two-wheel run-around, especially with a new crosstown bike path opening.

Summer in Helsinki is always a heady time for cyclists. The city offers some exquisite rides, out into the thickly forested Central Park, for instance, across the string of islands of Lehtisaari and Kaskisaari to the west, or following the banks of the Vantaa River.

June 12, 2012 marks the annual Helsinki Day celebrations, but also the opening of a new crosstown bike path nicknamed Baana. Built over the old freight rail connecting the Töölö Bay area and the suburb of Ruoholahti, it forms a source of excitement for cyclists and further raises the profile of cycling culture.

Good things are happening

As cycling cities go, Helsinki scores reasonably highly. “Good things are happening,” says Petteri Nisula of HePo, an acronym for Helsingin Polkupyöräilijät (Helsinki Cyclists). “We have the go-ahead for the first advance cycle stop lines, where cyclists can go ahead of cars in traffic at crossroads.

“Within a couple of years there will be one-direction cycling lanes along the central part of Mannerheimintie, running from the Swedish Theatre to the main post office and Kiasma [the museum of contemporary art]. And another new route will open across the new Aurora Bridge linking the Olympic Stadium with Central Park.”

Even so, says Nisula, a few challenges remain to be tackled before Helsinki can claim to be a truly great cycling city, on a par with the likes of Amsterdam and Copenhagen.

“Most of our cycle paths in the city run alongside pedestrian paths,” he says. “At the moment this leads to problems for both cyclists and walkers. A different kind of traffic system is needed.” Another typical hazard, he says, occurs when a car is turning at crossroads and the motorist may not always see cyclists about to cross or pass.

HePo, which represents Finland in the European Cyclists Federation, does all it can to promote the cycling cause, holding breakfasts for people riding to work and organising regular group ride events.

Cycling is healthy, cheap and environmentally friendly. Photo: Visit Finland, flickr.com,ccby2.0

A bike trip through the forests of Central Park in Helsinki is like a ride in the countryside. Photo: Tim Bird

Water break: A group ride event brings numerous cyclists to Helsinki’s Senate Square. Photo: Tim Bird

Winter wheels, too

On the face of it, cycling might seem to be exclusively a summer pastime, but Nisula sees no reason why more people should not consider cycling in the winter, although this too requires a mindset shift.

“There are more winter cyclists in other Finnish cities like Oulu and Jyväskylä, where the winters are much longer and more severe than in Helsinki,” he says. “It’s a bit of a paradox. But if the roads are managed well, if you wear the right clothes and if you look after your bicycle, it’s not so hard to cycle in winter.”

He welcomes the fact that more central Helsinki hotels are loaning out bicycles, although bike rental is still limited to a few outlets. A common summer sight downtown these days is the convoys of cruise ship passengers on cycling excursions – a function that the classic gearless Finnish Jopo city bike serves perfectly.

In summers past, Helsinki had a “deposit only” city bike loan scheme. It may start up again in a summer or two using credit card deposits or some other system, a move that Nisula would welcome.

Money makes the wheels go round

HePo is involved in lobbying for better cycling facilities. Although Helsinki installs a number of new bike paths each year, there’s always room for improvement.

“We have good ideas but we need money to make them happen,” says Nisula. “In Finland we have been concentrating much of our investment in car lanes and motor traffic, and now for climate reasons we have to change our attitudes and recognise that cycling can form an important part of our traffic system and invest in it.”

Nisula takes an optimistic view of the future of cycling in the capital and in Finland as a whole. “Attitudes are changing and the statistics show it, too. You can see more cyclists every year.”

By Tim Bird, June 2012

Finnish-Korean design duo shares secrets

Arts & culture Design

Finnish-Korean couple Johan Olin and Aamu Song form one of the most ubiquitous presences on the current Finnish art scene.

Their designs and installations attract a wide variety of audiences, and spectators may also become performers. In one famous work, Reddress,you can slip into one of the pockets of a colossal red gown spread out on the ground and listen to live music.

The Helsinki-based creative duo, known as COMPANY, has been successfully designing, exhibiting and touring since 2000. It all began when Song and Olin were hit with the thunderbolt during their student years, and since then this design collective has consistently done well.

Some of their projects have spellbound a set of international loyal COMPANY devotees. For a few years, the spotlight has shone on their humoristic set of sculptures Sounds of Sea in Auckland, New Zealand, and on the now world-famous Reddress performance installation in the shape of a giant dress. In Reddress, 238 members of the audience can nestle into huge pockets in the hem of the dress’s 550 metres of fabric and gaze up at a singer or musician.

Song explains how important it is for her to give the audience not just a close, fun experience through designs and ideas, but also a kind of “happy energy,” a very visible characteristic in most of COMPANY’s products and projects. In 2010, COMPANY received Finland’s prestigious State Prize for Design.

Revealing secrets

Designer Johan Olin, one half of COMPANY, confers with a Russian matryoshka doll maker at her workplace.Photo: Courtesy of Kiasma

COMPANY recently got back from Russia where they were working on their latest exhibition, Secrets of Russia – a project that was born from Top Secrets of Finland, a magnificent sales exhibition celebrating the traditional skills and local materials of Finnish artisans.

“We’ve been doing these Secrets projects since 2007,” says Olin. “Our process begins by visiting manufacturers and learning their traditions and skill sets. We then design new products based on their traditions.”

According to Song, they seldom try to find a new idea but rather “try to learn from masters who have been living and developing one craft for years and that often belong to a long line of craftsmanship.” Both Song and Olin enjoy visiting remote places and seeking out artisans.

Their ideas are based on the way they like to live; they work with “good people and travel to exotic places.” Song adds, “To work with people who like what you do is almost like heaven.”

Secrets of Finland subsequently gave way to the Secrets of Helsinki, and in 2011 Song and Olin embarked on a quest to find manufacturers and artisans working within the borders of Helsinki.

The results of their journey to Russia form the basis of a show at Helsinki’s Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art. Secrets of Russia was on display within a larger exhibition called Camouflage.

COMPANY’s products have found a permanent home near Kiasma: Salakauppa (Secret Shop), a cube-shaped walk-in kiosk with glass walls, stands on the corner by the Main Post Office, in plain view from the Kiasma entrance. It beckons to people looking to discover – or purchase – Song and Olin’s creations, the results of the couple’s numerous trips.

By Carina Chela, June 2012

Movies and midnight sun in Sodankylä, in the Finnish far north

Arts & culture Film

The festival brings filmmakers and discerning movie fans from all over the world to Sodankylä in the Finnish far north to watch films day and night while the magical midnight sun circles in the sky.

The screenings, morning discussions, concerts and other festival events gather a total of about 30,000 visitors each year. Here’s a taste of what awaits you: The guests include top filmmakers, cinematographers and award-winning directors from across the globe.

Window to the roots of Finland

The festival programme is always innovative, even surprising, a mix of old classics and rising stars.Photo: Maiju Saari

The festival has been drawing crowds since 1986. What is the magic behind the success? It all starts with the programme: always innovative, even surprising, a mix of old classics and rising stars. According to project manager Ari Lehtola, this is thanks to the artistic ambitions and high quality criteria of the professionals who choose the films and invite the special guests.

Then there’s that inimitable Sodankylä spirit, the unique atmosphere that charms everyone. Lehtola says that the festival concept was not planned – it came naturally: “This festival is all about love for the cinema. The spirit we try to grasp and communicate comes mainly from the way Mr Aki Kaurismäki tells stories.”

The festival organisation wants to maintain the romantic, nostalgically Finnish atmosphere of the event. “We try to create a window to the roots of Finland,” says Lehtola, “to the golden age of Finnish dancehalls with Olavi Virta and Finnish tango, and the structural changes of the Finnish countryside in the 1950s and ’60s. These sources of inspiration help us create a unique brand and an identity to cherish. Being genuine works, and is a value in itself.”

Don’t forget to sleep

Down to earth and full of midnight sun – this makes a unique festival atmosphere.Photo: Santeri Happonen

For an event this big, you need some help. Each year nearly 300 volunteers keep Midnight Sun going strong. Food, accommodation and free entry to the screenings are provided – plus, you get to know a lot of fun people.

Annu Suvanto, a student from Turku, southwestern Finland, has volunteered five times. “I come back for the films and the people,” she says. “I have made many friends here. Sodankylä is relaxed, free of hierarchies. The staff and the guests mix together quite well. It makes the festival special.”

Non-Finnish speakers can also volunteer. Franziska Zimmermann from Germany and Raquel Uzal from Spain, both students, came to volunteer as cleaners. “The best thing here is that they show films 24 hours a day,” says Zimmermann. “You can go to a screening whenever you want.” Uzal agrees: “You meet other international people who are crazy enough to come up here to work as cleaners!”

For many festivalgoers the journey to Sodankylä is an essential part of the festival experience. Emilia Rüf, a student from Helsinki, has travelled with five of her friends in a 40-year-old Volkswagen minibus for three days and nearly 1,200 kilometres. “It goes only 80 kilometres per hour so we took the smaller roads. We came here the same way last year, probably next year as well.”

Rüf attends the festival because it’s so down to earth and full of midnight-sun exoticness. “You lose track of time because you watch films around the clock. This is a perfect place for film fans!”

By Suvi Tuominen, June 2012, updated March 2023

Go with the flow along the Vantaa River

Life & society Slideshows

The Vantaa River (Vantaanjoki) forms one of Helsinki’s most charming and versatile (and to visitors, least-known) leisure-time assets. It meanders from its source at Lake Erkylä along a 100-kilometre course to the sea at the rapids at Vanhakaupunki (Old Town), where Helsinki was founded in 1550. The river makes a hook around the north and east of the capital area, skirting the verdant Keskuspuisto (Central Park).

In summer, the river comes into its own, providing one of the area’s best cycling routes – bike paths run along both banks. It also attracts anglers, kayakers and picnickers, as well as swimmers and sunbathers at a number of sandy beaches.

Our picture series takes a colourful summer voyage along the river, reflecting its moods and revealing some of the annual attractions close to its banks.

Taking the plunge at Pikkukoski Beach, a popular party haunt for Helsinki youngsters. Photo: Tim Bird

New housing at Kartanonkoski in Vantaa has taken the unique riverside landscape into account. Photo: Tim Bird

The café at the Haltiala farm could be in any rural corner of Finland – but it’s barely 30 minutes from central Helsinki. Photo: Tim Bird

Bike trails run along the Vantaa River from the rapids at Pitkäkoski in the north downstream to Vanhakaupunki, making a superb half-day outing. Photo: Tim Bird

Every July traditional haystacks are built in the fields near the bridge at Tapaninvainio and a celebratory summer dance takes place at the Tuomarinkylä manor house. Photo: Tim Bird

The banks of the river on the northern edge of Helsinki are converted to a golden blaze when some fields are turned over to free, pick-your-own sunflowers in late summer. Photo: Tim Bird

After the spring flood, the rapids at Pitkäkoski, on the edge of the Keskuspuisto (Central Park), revert to a restful tumble. Photo: Tim Bird

The slow descent of the sun on long summer evenings provides spectacular sunsets which are eerily reflected in the still waters of the Vantaa River. Photo: Tim Bird

A number of beaches along the banks of the river – this one is at Tapaninvainio – provide refreshing relief on sultry summer days. Photo: Tim Bird

Moonlight on the river lilies: The Vantaa River possesses a unique and restful magic on summer nights. Photo: Tim Bird

Canoe contests are held on the Vantaa River when the rapids are at their liveliest. Photo: Tim Bird

The rapids at Vanhakaupunki, where the river meets the sea, are popular with serious anglers and hopeful hook-danglers alike. Photo: Tim Bird

Text and photos by Tim Bird

Sustainable learning branches out

Life & society Education

Who says it isn’t possible to combat climate change while also making a difference for world peace? A Finnish interdisciplinary virtual school named Environment Online (ENO) continues its speedy growth, now recruiting Israeli education authorities for the cause.

Just over a decade ago in the promised land of technology and forestry known as Finland, in the eastern town of Joensuu, a relatively ordinary teacher began asking himself a question: How can we get teachers and pupils around the world to talk, share and work together against the notion that “sustainability” is nothing but a popular-science buzzword?

Mika Vanhanen’s previously utopian idea of a global school became possible as the breadth and reach of the internet increased.

He teamed up with like-minded people to create an online space for educators to communicate with one another across borders and subject areas, gain accessibility to high-quality material and tools to help them speak a language that young people can understand. ENO was the name of Vanhanen’s brainchild – short for Environment Online, but also the name of a Joensuu suburb.

Coincidentally eno is the Finnish word for “uncle” – an image that actually describes the organisation pretty well. A bit like an uncle, ENO oversees and guides but does not command. Programs are adapted by regional representatives to suit the needs of individual areas and further developed based on the feedback.

So too in Israel, one of 150 ENO countries and its longest-standing partner in the Middle East. "Participating schools become providers of local knowledge about flora, fauna, soil, agriculture, urban aspects, arts and crafts and youth movement, based on students’ research," says Carmella Baranga, ENO’s coordinator for Israel.

The current total of 5,000 ENO schools globally is best explained by ENO’s diverse regional recipes, which are, as Baranga puts it, homemade.

Kinaesthetic to the core

Behind the pedagogical process is an old truth: You learn by doing. For this reason, ENO’s core activity is not located in cyberspace, but is literally as down-to-earth as you can get: The children plant their own trees.

Photo: ENO

ENO’s goals, which include “concrete deeds against climate change,” possess the power to engage and create genuine interest and commitment among young participants.

Planting activity forms a monitored, integrated part of the ENO programme. Suitable indigenous tree species are picked for each region and planting is intensified in areas suffering from deforestation.

Official tree-planting days are held twice a year, and 2011 is the UN International Year of Forests – an added incentive for schools to get their kids planting.

A specific goal has been set for schools worldwide: to plant 100 million trees by the 100th anniversary of Finland in 2017. Never mind the fact that they are still 95 million short of their target. Aim high and you’ll reach high – isn’t that what teachers always say?

Planting peace

A breakthrough occurred in November 2010 when a decision by the Israeli Ministry of Education made Israel the first country to grant the ENO program official status in the national education system.

Photo: ENO

Top-down approval has meant a massive step forward for sustainable education in Israel. A separate subdivision was created within the ministry for sustainable teaching and learning. Whereas previously schools taking part in the ENO programme were found only in the south, they now exist all over the country.

Tree planting is what kids seem to love most about ENO, and Israeli children are no exception. The global planting days in May and September are so popular that Israel also created a tree planting day of its own, held on the Jewish holiday known as the New Year of the Trees, which takes place in January or February (January 20 in 2011, February 8 in 2012).

In some settings, peace and tolerance might seem very abstract when named as aims or results of ENO’s activities. This can hardly be said about the Middle East. Baranga notes that the programme promotes “ethical values such as respect for other people, customs and religions, preservation of local culture and personal responsibility.”

Since ENO became officially recognised in Israel, children in all schools, regardless of religion or ethnicity, have been helping enlarge the ENO forest. Ethnic differences tend to fade into the background when you see the sprouts you planted together become thriving trees. That’s what we call real flower power – and it began in a town in eastern Finland.

Links:

ENO Programme
ENO Tree Planting Day
ENO Climate Change Campaign
ENO Book Project "Drops of Life"

By Angelina Palmén, January 2011

Education evolves at a dream of a school

Life & society Education

An electronic portfolio called the Learning Diary allows students and teachers at Kauniainen’s Dream School to store materials, track progress and build on prior experiences. It shows how education is evolving in Finland.

Jussi A. comes home after evening ice hockey practice, just in time for dinner with his family. Afterwards, he logs on to his school account on his laptop and checks his Learning Diary, looking over the presentations he submitted yesterday. For one of his physics assignments, he and two friends decided to answer the questions by creating a short film, which they then filed in their Learning Diary. Other students chose various formats: One used a slide presentation, a few others handed in word processing documents.

Jussi’s teacher, Mrs B., has reviewed the submission, and left annotations and comments for Jussi and his partners to read. The teacher’s comments include reference to the self-evaluation of the assignment that Jussi had submitted earlier. All students are allowed to comment on their assignments this way. The teacher can evaluate, grade and comment on the work in the Learning Diary at any time or place via the internet.  

The Learning Diary forms an electronic portfolio, a central hub where students can collect all their materials with net-based (cloud-based) tools. This portfolio can hold all their work – picture and word presentations, sound and video files. It can be used over multiple school years, and the goal is that the student can refer to up to 12 years’ work. Prior projects can be built upon, be used across the curriculum and serve as a source of knowledge and inspiration for others when shared.

For the teacher it is a one-stop collection of student assignments, both graded and ungraded. In one screen view the teacher can see assignments awaiting commentary or grade, regardless of file type or mode of production. The Learning Diary is a unique way of allowing students to build on prior experiences. 

Remarkable inversion in education 

Photo: Dream School

At the start of the project the teacher creates and shares a tag with the students. This tag contains the instructions for an assignment, for example, a book report, a presentation or an essay. The student does the work with a tool of his or her choice – not always the teacher’s choice: blog, wiki, video, sound file, presentation software or some other mode. The teacher can follow the students’ progress, comment and make suggestions along the way. When ready, the student places a link to his work in the Learning Diary, completes a self-assessment and sends the teacher a request to assess the finished product.

Development of the Learning Diary started with the needs of the teaching staff at the Kasavuori School in Kauniainen, outside of Helsinki. Using a multitude of net-based tools and the need to incorporate video, pictures, and sound files made it necessary to create a place that could display and store work produced in various file formats and with a multitude of tools.

Nothing else quite like it exists in education – in Finland or elsewhere. The Learning Diary itself is a consequence, not the source of change. The actual source of change is a remarkable inversion in education, envisioned by the community and the school together.  

Students as knowledge providers

Kauniainen is a small town west of Helsinki, with a well-educated population. At the heart of the development process is a realisation that the good education of today would not be good enough for tomorrow. There was a conviction that schooling today was not sufficiently preparing their kids for a world that will change even more rapidly than it does today. We needed to evolve and change – not just improve existing processes.

In 2006 the local school authority brought in leading thinkers from outside to brainstorm with the community and the school to help define a progressive pathway to reinvent what was already an excellent school system. This was the new covenant between the community and the school – to do everything possible to encourage all students to learn. Consistent with the ambitions and results, the local school authority named it the Dream School.

The goal is to defragment and unify the process of learning. The Learning Diary represents one of our enabling tools. This student-centric pedagogy strives to recognise and harness the rapidly evolving real-world knowledge our students possess. Instead of the curriculum being a distribution mechanism for fixed knowledge, it incorporates the knowledge students themselves create and have to share. In this rethink, the teacher is not the only source of knowledge. The student is also invested in the knowledge development and sharing process.

The Dream School ambition required rethinking the use of IT to address simultaneous but opposite needs: to increase efficient and creative IT use, and to cut costs. The most important communication takes place face to face, and the aim was to create good tools, practises and savings that could be reinvested in greater teacher involvement and easier ways to tailor the learning process.

Open source empowers users

To support their goals, the parties involved opted for an open source, cloud-based technology model. Closed models are more expensive, and they do not harness the necessary innovation. For example, the Learning Diary is an open source application, developed in collaboration with a supplier within the framework of a public–private partnership.

Photo: Dream School

The Linux-based Dream School service platform utilises open source products that are cost-effective and easy to use. The users are also active participants in the development of tools that meet their demands. This is a marked contrast to the model with which the education sector is familiar: software purchasing.

Within the framework of the public–private partnership, renowned companies provide services to the school, such as educational software, communication tools and administrative tools. The school participates in product development. Importantly, the partner companies can market these services on an open source basis to other schools.

The focal point is the empowered user. With a single sign-in, a user can access all services and communication. The aim is to shorten the distance between the user and what he or she wants to accomplish. All parts of the system are economical, energy efficient and environmentally sound. The ease and reliability of the system form motivating factors for the users.

Innovation and development is ongoing. The initiatives to further develop the Dream School concept in the areas of school administration, decision-making, assessment, pedagogy and IT are continuously being developed and improved. The Dream School has several other initiatives and ongoing public–private partnership projects with universities, researchers and developers of learning materials – including games.  

Links:

Dream School info and news
Dream School animation

By Sirkku Nikamaa, February 2011

Helsinki turns tables, grows greener

Arts & culture Design

At the very centre of Helsinki green shoots of urban gardening are sprouting from the tracks of a former railway depot.

2728-6905222766_8953f714e6_b-paiviraiviododo-550px-jpg

Early days: The greenhouse took shape over the tracks of an old railway turntable before the snow melted.Photo: Päivi Raivio/Dodo

“We’ve calculated that this spot is actually the geographical centre of Helsinki,” says Kirmo Kivelä, one of the driving forces behind Kääntöpöytä (Turntable), a new and unusual city gardening area run by urban environmental organisation Dodo.

We’re standing in a disused rail yard just south of Pasila Station. Trains rattle past on another, raised array of tracks less than 100 metres away, just beyond a set of buildings that used to house rail offices and workshops where locomotives were maintained.

Now the same buildings contain office space for architects, graphic designers and other creative types, not to mention an indoor rock-climbing centre. The turntable, a rotating stretch of track, was formerly used to turn locomotives around. Now a greenhouse has been built over the track, and the rest of the area given over to café tables and planting boxes that Kivelä calls “intensive organic urban gardening.”

Packs a green punch

The café pre-debuted in 2011 in a different incarnation, as a pop-up restaurant on Helsinki’s Restaurant Day. It’s open two or three days a week in 2012, serving meals that pack a green punch. City gardening workshops take place at regular intervals, not to mention a beekeeping workshop.

Inch by inch, row by row: Installing these planting boxes takes a group effort.Photo: Dodo

The greenhouse, shaped like an upward-pointing triangle, took shape over the turntable’s original frame, which is a protected structure. “Dodo is all about openness and democracy,” says architect Joseph Mulcahy, an Englishman who has lived in Finland for five years. “But how do you make a structure democratic? We went down the path of an elemental structure with no hidden joints.”

The greenhouse is made of wood and transparent polycarbonate, held together with nuts and bolts. Two carpenters and several helpers built the structure over a winter fortnight when the ground was still covered with snow and the gardening season seemed a faraway dream.

Turntable forms a cultural and social project as well as an agricultural one. The organisers hope that it and Dodo’s other urban gardening projects will help show the way to more growing opportunities in a city where there aren’t enough municipal garden plots to go around. Kivelä and his colleagues also offer advice and help obtain materials for gardening in boxes and bags, on balconies and windowsills, in apartment building courtyards and just about any other place in the city where something will grow.

By Peter Marten, April 2012

Tag: English

Åland treasures maritime memories

Putting the museum in ship shape

Eye-catching exhibits

Pedal power: Helsinki likes bikes

Good things are happening

Winter wheels, too

Money makes the wheels go round

Finnish-Korean design duo shares secrets

Revealing secrets

Movies and midnight sun in Sodankylä, in the Finnish far north

Window to the roots of Finland

Don’t forget to sleep

Go with the flow along the Vantaa River

Sustainable learning branches out

Kinaesthetic to the core

Planting peace

Links:

Education evolves at a dream of a school

Remarkable inversion in education

Students as knowledge providers

Open source empowers users

Links:

Helsinki turns tables, grows greener

Packs a green punch

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