Hvitträsk

With  my family in Germany over Easter, I decided to use my free time for visiting Hvitträsk, former home and studio to the trio of architects who belonged to the most influencial forces during the Art Nouveau period in Helsinki: Hermann Gesellius, Armas Lindgren and  Eliel Saarinen. Unfortunately, the weather was very “Finnish” and the…

Musica Nova

I received an invitation to a concert at the Musica Nova Festival for contemporary music in Helsinki. The Boulanger Trio from Germany (Karla Haltenwanger – piano, Birgit Erz – violin, Ilona Kindt – cello) played compositions of Carter, Staudl, Jarrel, Hosokawa and Shepherd. I am no expert on comtemporary classical music, so I went with…

The library

I am waiting for 2017. It’s when the new city library is supposed to be ready for the celebration of 100th anniversary of Finnish independence.   On this webpage  you can watch the offical video of the announcement of the winner and assessment of the six best entries (scroll down to the bottom of the…

Matching architecture styles

Modern architecture in historical city centers often leaves me wondering. I especially “love” it  in articles on new architecture when they emphasize enthusiastically how wonderfully the new building ” blends in with the surroundings”, while I  rather alternate in my choice of words between “eyesore” or “barely tolerable”. But there are those rare cases that…

Craning your neck

Finnish “Jugendstil”, Art Nouveau,  lasted only 25 years (1895-1920). In those years, over 600 multistory apartment buildings were built in Helsinki, which changed the face of large parts of the city in a blink, from a sleepy wooden town with patches of bare rock,  to an urban environment. In a dramatic pace, these buildings were…

Das einzige, was bleibt…

…ist der Wandel, so scheint es. Den folgenden Beitrag habe ich vielleicht 2007 in meinem blog “Im Land der Schneekönigin” geschrieben. Eine kleine Anekdote, die ich hier vor allem deshalb schreibe, weil sie dokumentiert, mit welcher Geschwindigkeit sich Helsinki verändert hat in den letzten 10 Jahren. Mit der ganzen Familie lohnt es sich schon mal,…