Meaningful Design in Helsinki

It’s July. Juhannus a.k.a. midsummer is behind us. This is a complicated time of year. Air and water temperatures will (hopefully) rise a bit over the next few weeks. Meanwhile the days are already getting shorter.

This also means that over one half of the marketing ploy that is Helsinki’s Design Fest 2012 is over. Yet, like the middle of summer, the middle of the WDC-2012-year may be the mathematical middle of this year of design-hype but it’s not the middle in any meaningful way. The season is only just beginning!

We expect hard evidence of Finnish design excellence soon, and not just in a canyon left over by a redundant railway line turned over to cycling.

More in evidence and in the advertising has been the “heart” of Helsinki’s design festival. This is the temporary pavilion behind the Design Museum. A daily programme of events (speakers) there has been trying to enthuse people to learn about design since early May, with varying success.

Apart from the fact that it’s been incredibly cold in the space, perhaps the Helsinki public or the tourists who stray that way simply aren’t interested in being preached at. And it’s worth noting that the Finnish version of the website is a tad more heavy-handed than the English-language page about the great things design can do to make the world a better place. Perhaps the copywriters intuit that Panglossian rhetoric doesn’t sound so good translated from the Finnish into other languages.

But don’t get me wrong. We here at JHJ have admiration for beautiful design. We almost even agree with the myth that says Finnish design has grown organically out of the harsh but beautiful Finnish landscape. (And we recommend the recently published Finnish-language history of Finnish Design edited by Paula Hohti so you get the nuance too).

(We also recommend the design show at Taidehalli which, time permitting, JHJ will cover in a subsequent post, but if not, read the Helsinki Times’ inimitable prose [surely not, Ed.?] on the subject here).

But we do find the Helsinki take on design, er, just a little worthy.

There’s too much of the self-congratulatory about it all. For instance, that design is built into Finns’ lives from birth, when they receive a perfectly designed and perfectly functional maternity package to set them up with the best start in life, materially, technologically, culturally… (this is on show at the Virka gallery). And there’s far too much of design solving this, that and the other global problem.

And as if JHJ needs more grounds for scepticism about design’s (or Finland’s) capacity to fix real problems like, say, the Eurozone crisis, the Baltic or social alienation, today’s Omakaupunki publication tells us that the city can’t even get a simple traffic counter to work properly!

For months the city has been making noises about supporting cycling. To encourage us two-wheelers they have been counting our use of three popular routes.

I never was so clear on why being the two hundred and ninety-seventh cyclist to pass Helsinki Railway Station was supposed to feel encouraging, but it never bothered me either. But it turns out that the machine was so badly designed that it has left a third of us uncounted.

Apparently the counter at the Baana cycle corridor, which goes from Ruoholahti and Helsinki’s future high-rise hotel (see previous post) to the field of asphalt between Kiasma, the Sanoma  and the Music Buildings, does work. And apparently the route has been popular. (Just watch out as you spill out at the eastern end – I foresee accidents to come here.)

Still, design or not, we hope the Baana will get lots of use in the next few weeks before it gets too dark for most cyclists to venture down there.

Häme Highway for bicycles! Now!

I HATE THIS

A bit of shameless advertising here from a disgruntled JHJ.

The city authorities persist in their belief that There Is No Alternative to cars and to pandering to people who are addicted to them. Hence the abundance of almost invisible car parks – and hence presumably also the traffic they generate when they’re not snugly squatting in some parallel universe.

They are blasting more and more great holes in the granite (we believe this concrete mushroom near the National Museum is going to be an entrance to yet another underground car park) and there’s more to come (near Töölö market, for instance – as if that would enliven this sadly tired formerly lively part of Helsinki).

Meanwhile, cyclists wanting to get out of the centre towards the East have to take circuitous routes that add length to their journeys because Hämeentie is so utterly scary and genuinely dangerous for cyclists. A lot of people and at least one blog (in Finnish) have already examined options for helping out cyclists here.

If it weren’t for the fact that JHJ’s bike fell apart (again) and is due for repairs, we would be joining a wee protest against the city’s inertia by going on the critical bike ride that’s going to take place today starting at 18.00 from Lasipalatsi, preceded by a discussion on it at Laituri.

Between degrowth and under-development (underground car parks, that is)

Helsinkians disagree quite a lot about the best way to go about things. In fact, I’d say this city is pulling in opposing directions in lots of ways. It wants more local services, but also more centralisation. More sustainability, more cars and fewer buses. It follows the imperative to put more money in everyone’s pocket, but there are also some who haven’t just heard of, they want to promote, degrowth. There are those who want more stuff and bigger homes to fit it into and those who don’t. And so on.

Same thing for shops, our perennial preoccupation here at Jees Helsinki Jees. Those who want local shops and services talk about it non-stop. Meanwhile the centralised food retail system keeps us in its constantly expanding clutches. And, on the rare occasions when one ventures to read media reports (Finland’s accelerating lurch to the right means it’s better to avoid broadcast news) it doesn’t take long for either out-of-town shopping or the beloved little shop, squat in its stone-foundations, to be covered.

The same goes for the bicycle. There are those who see it as a threat or a nuisance. And there are those who are eagerly promoting it as the best, safest, most human-sized, quietest, low-emmission, healthy, city-scale, adaptable (shall I go on…?) mode of transport after walking.

Helsinkians’ bikes have always been cool and quirky, like fashion statements. This photo from Megapolis2025 is from when Copenhagen’s Mr cycle chic, Mikael Colville-Andersen, came over to try and persuade us that what (who) rides a bicycle, can be chic too. Don’t just do up the bike, do up yourself!

Alas, for all the efforts to treat cycling as attractive, Helsinki still prioritises the motor car. OK, it goes about it by helping everyone to pretend cars aren’t there and sticking them underground for the day (the ka-boom-growl-brrrm-ka-boom of those granite-exploding car-park makers tells me they’re still at it – nine in the evening!)

And then there’s a green politician using his video-blog to complain that the problem isn’t the lack of cycle provision or a safe environment created by thoughtful motorists. Nope, Pekka Sauri’s ire was reserved for cyclists who cycle too fast.

On a happier note. I returned to the safe circle of Eira (see my earlier post) briefly today. “My” old shop, Laivurin Valinta is still there, still selling all the provisions a family could want. Well, all the provisions that a family that’s happy with only about twenty types of filter coffee, three brands of tomato ketchup, one organic hummous dip and a wide selection of fruit and veg, not all of it imported.

OK, I didn’t actually count them. But compared to the football-pitch-expanses of retail space coming soon (as soon as the dregs of this recession are over with) to a former field near you, it’s pretty small but utterly adequate if not more. To my pleasure it was packed with people of all ages gathering their provisions into baskets of varying quantities before wending their way to the cheerful check-out.

Across the road I decided to forego the waffle and instead got some sweets from the kiosk. Next week it’s time to hibernate, so go get your fix now!

Blast! And winding down…

It’s a delight and a luxury to travel by sea to Helsinki (from Tallinn, this time) even if friends routinely warn me of the dangers involved. (For the uninitiated, we are talking alcohol, noise and vomit as key ingredients). But how wonderful when land comes into view, rocks, skerries and islands too, and suddenly you’re there.

Time, though, is money. Your average urban dweller isn’t going to have too much of it. And your average traveller will go by plane. I guess gradually JeesHelsinkiJees will also wind down and disappear. There is not enough time to blog.

Meanwhile, that lovely Helsinki institution, Dodo ry (the environmental organisation for townsfolk) is gearing up to celebrate urban life this Saturday with its annual Megapolis event. This year they are seeking better rhythms for the city. Any city, but Helsinki in particular. This would involve more cycling, walking, strolling, swimming, rowing and skateboarding and, perhaps, skiing. And, presumbaly, doing those things in style, with a kind of urban panache, like Copenhagen is known for.

Meanwhile, living as we do in the vicinity of the cluster of building sites near Töölö Bay, we are aware that even if Helsinki is keen to free up more space above ground for all that nice stuff, underground the city busy tunnelling. For what? To get more cars to fit into the city.

We know this because around these parts we get to hear the dulcet booms of 21st-century technology as it blasts its way through ancient granite. Two Parliament buildings’ worth (by volume) just for the parking and service tunnel for Finlandia Hall and the new Music House, according to MTV.

Enough people over about five years have had enough time to get upset about the blasts – often at night – to fill the internet with variously reliable information about it. I asked the “isännöistijä” or the guy who manages our block of flats and he told me it’s the Music building car park. I think I believe him.

P.S. How boring that they’ve decided to call Musiikkitalo Music Centre. Music House would have been so exotic!

On cars, hotel-hitting trains and other forms of transport

The end of the twentieth century made it an imperative, it seemed, for every locality on the planet to be within easy reach of everywhere, for every place to have the same products and services as every other place, and for every place to be unique.

It’s been tough!

But for some, at least the first requirement – an omni-connective transport infrastructure – seems straightforward: build more transport infrastructure everywhere! In Helsinki cars and owners of cars are still prioritised, which you can feel in the slowly but pretty surely and clearly increasing volumes of traffic that pass through the peninsula. Even the ring roads are reproducing – having had numbers one and three for most of my life, we now have most of number 2 as well. Expensive business, certainly, but you gotta have roads.

There’s of course lots of ways to count the costs and benefits of things like cars, but one interesting set of calculations was done on this blog (called Muukalaisia Vesirajassa or Strangers at the Waterline) arguing that Helsinki still pays out far more shared money to support the lifestyles and space/infrastructure and other needs of habitual drivers than to support those using public transport.

Per driver the city and its redidents pay 949 euros a year. A public transport user’s costs are 346 and cyclist’s 313 euros per annum. (my translation from http://vesirajassa.blogspot.com/2009/12/kaupunkiautoilun-hinta.html)

Well, this morning the public transport side here in Finland’s capital was somewhat challenged when – once again – a train hit the side of a building at the central railway station. Meanwhile, despite continuing below-zero temperatures (thank goodness!!) the cyclists still appear to be out in relative force (thank you) and the buses are still running. Airport? Get it sorted guys!!

Snow notes

In case JHJ gets bogged down in things that prevent blogging, a quick update on life with snow.

Studded snow tyres on bicycles come into their own, and the studs on four-wheeled vehicles no longer make that horrible scratchy noise on the (bare) tarmac. The snow does wonderful things generally to noise. Even the sound of a snow plough toing-and-froing somewhere nearby can seem like poetry.

Meanwhile everyone seems happier. There is a little light in the sky. There is light reflecting off the snow. And take it from people who know, 8 below zero is far more pleasant to walk in, even to wait at a bus-stop in, than +1.

I first read about the possibility of climate change or global warming in Time Magazine in the early 1980s. It chilled my teenaged heart like never before. Still, I reckoned that even with the car lobby and the evil destroyers of tropical forests I had found out about, decision makers would figure out some way of steering development towards ecological sanity – by gradually moving away from private cars and air travel, progressing railway technology and installing renewable energy, that kind of thing.

Well, here we are, in 2009, in Helsinki’s Punavuori. Here’s a railway that’s no longer being used.And here’s a link to what might befall not just Helsinki and its identity as a city that has a white winter, but the forests in the rest of Finland. Remember them? From the days when it was said “Finland Lives off its Forests”?

November is warmer inside

Replying to Inari’s comment on cycling in Helsinki, it’s definitely true that there are 8 months – at least – of perfect cycling conditions environmentally speaking. The built infrastructure is still, as they say, a work in progress. For a bit of cycling infra idiocy, see this.

From the country that decade after decade pulls out that dreary slogan, “Finland: Four Seasons, Four Reasons” (I found another here) it may sometimes feel like there’s a bit too MUCH season going on. And yet, thinking of “Copenhagen”, most Helsinki residents I know are really quite nostalgic for a time when snow was guaranteed, if not for Christmas, at least January to March.

Whatever the outside, of course there is the wonderfulness of warm interiors. One is never so cold in Finland (even when it’s 22 below (zero)), as in London in a 1904-built terraced house, even one with state-0f-the-art central heating. CHP keeps us snug in our flats, at school, in restaurants and cafes and, mostly, in libraries. To minimise the threat of cold creeping in through doorways, Finland’s public buildings also mostly have a tuulikaappi , or wind closet, literally translated. That’s a small (or bigger, e.g. at Stockmann’s) hallway wegded between two sets of doors, which helps you acclimatise and allows you to shrug off the sleet that stuck to your overcoat and stamp off the mud on your boots, before entering the actual interior.

As an example, here is SKS, the Finnish Literature Society, designed by architect-banker Sebastian Gripenberg. Its library north of the market square has been beautifully renovated and offers a fabulous place to work in peace and quiet and warmth. As well as a lovely selection of books on things cultural and literal.

Literary (ed.).

November’s cycle lanes

“Copenhagen” is fast approaching. Not the city of course, just the international climate conference to be held there that’s temporarily using its name. To mark the occasion, the British Council in Helsinki and some Finnish activists have embarked on efforts to reduce Finland’s huge carbon footprint … by getting more people on their bikes more year round.

Now we here at JeesJees are all for cycling and we even use bicycles (and public transport) rather than a motor car for our daily needs, but we sense that the popularity of cycling is always going to be contingent on environmental factors – wet, windy, icy and dark are words to describe this time of year around these parts.

From Unioninkatu to Vuosaari, the cycle lanes are out there still, but looking somewhat like they were waiting for the winter to come and then go again. With the arrival on the market of studded bicycle tyres – or is that with demand from enthusiastic cyclists? – winter-cycling in Helsinki is no longer utterly unusual. Nor, except in certain quarters, does it automatically elicit the routine-response of a decade or two ago, that it’s a sure sign of madness.

A couple more, the red stretch by the market on Pohjois Esplanadi and the curve from the Railway Station to Mannerheimintie where this time pedestrians waiting obediently to cross are huddled in just the right place so as to give way to cyclists. Should any appear.

Not to be forgotten, a “critical bike ride” is being organised by Finland’s Friends of the Earth for this Saturday, 14.11. And we do realise as well that it would be a GOOD THING if cycling facilities and attitudes to cyclists were improved  still more.

Warmer online than out there

The darkness is upon us and getting heavier minute by minute, week by week. So, onto more cheerful subjects.

Emerging from three days of deadlining (rushing madly to get something finished) I realise the outside world has become too cold for comfortable cycling and certainly too cold for stopping to take still photos. This one was done gloves-on and on the move.

It seems wise, instead, to head for the warmer environment of the internet. No wonder it’s so warm here, with all this activity going on!

What do I find. References to The Usual, of course. In one, my friend (and “friend”) observes that public opinion seems very hostile towards sociable, shared use of streets and pavements, including public transport. It seems there is debate as to which should be higher, a fine for fare dodging on buses and trams. (I was going to write “bumming a ride” but that’s a) something else though it is b) an intuitive tranlation of the Finnish “mennä pummilla”).

Elsewhere, namely on the leader page, Finnish society is derided for being inward-looking to the point of incestuous (unless the meaning of sisäsiittoinen has been altered), that it’s NIS (that’s national innovation system, of course) is outdated and no longer delivering the biz, and that Finns bask in the unhealthy glow of misguided smugness. As a country Finland is apparently bureaucratic and rewards mediocrity, no wonder the international talent isn’t banging to get in!

Whence this outburst? Well, the usual quarters, naturally. The Ministry of Education and the M. of work and industry commissioned six foreign and six home-grown professors and researchers of the surprisingly soberly (for a Finnish organisation of its kind) named Research Institute of the Finnish Economy to study, er, not what Finns generally are doing but what the innovation committees have been getting up to. This apparently shows that some ministers have better things to do than attend committee meetings devoted to inspiring creativity and innovation.

Well whaddaya know! Leaving aside for a moment what we think ministers should be doing, the report and media attention is run-of-the-mill stuff: we should all pull up our socks, work harder, spend more imaginatively, submit our lives to the creativity-innovation imperative with all its routine waffle and generally be more like the cosmopolitan elites. Though having jumped to this old chestnut, it strikes me that this could all be part of a cleverly veiled attack on the not-so-cosmopolitan elites which have been mentioned recently on this blog.

Or, we could take all this in our stride (after all, what government doesn’t periodically resort to underhand use of professors’ time to whip the populace into shape?) and conclude that really what Finland needs to do is recognise its strengths, or at least perceived strengths. From a Helsinki point of view those include a still rather loveably well-oiled public transport system (another excuse for a gratuitous picture of a tram! Featuring ticket inspectors) and a cycle infrastructure that is, as the research shows (as I wrote last week) remarkably extensive. Unless the balance of power between the carbon-powered and the carbo-powerd in this city has altered massively, there should be no reason here to set up something like the London Cycling Campaign.

On which note, off to celebrate the tenth anniversary of one of that august institution’s AGMs. It was then and there, exactly a decade ago, under the sign of the bycicle, that Mr P and I first laid eyes on each other.

Love, JHJ a.k.a. Mrs P or Narrator

p.s. (In the time it has taken me to draft this, the internet has allowed a friendly cycling soul to direct me to Helsinki’s equivalent of the LCC, HePo whose website includes an English-language page, naturally.)