Life amid the Firewalls (From the Archives)

I built this little house in 2022 to fill in the city block in a display of three Finnish Art Nouveau buildings. It was first displayed in TAD Week exhibition "Aikaikkuna" in Finlayson, Tampere, and later in Pii Poo Helsinki event, part of Palikkatakomo's Finnish City project. I didn't photograph it back then; but recently I decided that it was its time to go (urban milieus change so fast...) and decided to document is before the demolition. I also made the right flank of the modular base black: it was not visible in the display layout, and was thus rainbow-coloured. 

This is an educative model if I ever built one. The idea was to demonstrate how simple wooden houses survived among the large stone buildings of Finnish towns and cities far to the 20th century. The styles of the large buildings changed relentlessly, but the wooden buildings stayed pretty much the same - ignoring the city layout and slow to adopt modern-day conveniences like water closets and running water in general. Their materials were common and cheap: movable timber frame, some weather boards, brick-built chimney, roof of metal sheets or asphant felt (wooden roof materials were forbidden in cities due to the fire hazard.) The fire regulations required a ladder on each house to make the roof more easily accessible.

This way of life has disappeared decades ago. However, it is quite well known, because the Board of Antiquities of Helsinki - the predecessor of the city museum - hired professional photographer Signe Brander to document the "passing Helsinki" in 1906. Brander's photographs have incredibly good quality - she had the best equipment available and plenty of artistic eye to capture the townscape and its life. 1,572 of Brander's photographs are available for free in Finna. Although her main aim was documenting the endangered old wooden buildings, as a side product she made some of the best documentation of Art Nouveau architecture of Helsinki - often on the edges and background of her photos. That contrast was exactly was I wanted to capture in this model. Here are some references I used:

My own interpretation of the subject focused on colour - something that Brander's photographs naturally do not mediate. Olive green is a beautiful colour that matched this use perfectly; the back side of the masonry bricks worked as the weatherboarding. Lawns were uncommon, so dark tan worked as the ground colour, likely also matching the earlier built neighbouring buildings. I added vibrant autumn colours to contrast with down-to-earth browns and greens; the tree recycled earlier designs but worked well nonetheless. At that point, I did not have bright light orange (keetorange) leaves yet.

I established certain randomness to the model to capture the right mood of Brander's photos. The plot had to look lived in. I emphasised this, ans the contrast to the large, well-defined neighbours by twisting the house off from the stud grid. Finally, I left the back side without any details, as it would be totally obscured by the neighbours. The back wall of the building is dark bley to save olive green bricks.

-Eero.