Together Through Life
Is a good public space to people as good public space is to other species?
The new theatre hall in Tapiola wants to have it both ways: Instead of a totally underground building suggested by the brief, our architecture is located between overground and underground. The public urban space is between nature and urban. The approach to the 1980’s cultural centre by Arto Sipinen aims to create a completely new interface between highly considerate and opportunistically presuming. The hard content of the design is in ecological consideration of local species -both plant and animal- and viable built strategies to accommodate them. From the initial act of compressing the vast program and leaving a maximum site area untouched, to finding architectural solutions on how to building a healthy below grade building out of wood, the design seeks an architecture of coexistence between people and other species, and maybe even between species and the planet.
TYPE: Public Building, LOCATION: Espoo/Finland, SIZE: 22.000sqm, CLIENT: City of Espoo, STATUS:Invited Competition 2018, TEAM: &’, B&M, Plehat, Emmi Keskisarja, Janne Teräsvirta, Jussi Murole, Daniel Burneo, Nikolai Rautio, Mikko Vekkeli, Beata Willman, J-P Lehtinen, Tuomas Seppänen, Jouni Ikäheimo