Over 80 hectares of prime real estate awaiting improvement by a construction-friendly urban administration somewhere near us. JHJ feels it needs saving from such improvement.
Meanwhile in Lapinlahti (below), where architectural and natural beauty helped generations of Finns find meaning in their lives again, one wonders what the administration has in mind.
Designed by C. L. Engel (of Senate Square fame) and opened in 1841, in 2006 its remarkable therapeutic environment was abandoned. Like empty buildings usually, this one has also started to feel alienating and problematic. Yet its beauty is such that even after a decade of neglect, its charms are definitely still there.
The city’s website suggests that finances and ideas for bringing Lapinlahti back into use of any kind may require selling part of the land (owned by the city) to a developer. They are apparently the creatures that make enough money that some might be siphoned off for breathing new life into our shared legacy.
Active citizens are campaigning for the old mental hospital to be turned into a beacon of forward-looking care.
And administrative documents (a source of jobs for a number of us, so I won’t knock them) describe the area as a unique site of cultural heritage with special architectural, landscape, recreational and botanical values.
Shame about the noise! The motorway going West to Espoo starts just across the water.
Jees Helsinki Jees 