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- [00:10]
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The benefits of living or working in a wooden building can be felt everywhere, from fresher air to kinder acoustics. And they don't look half bad either. So what impact could a wooden facility have on school life? You're listening to Tall Stories, a monocle production brought to you by the team behind the Urbanist. I'm Andrew Tuck. In this episode, Petri Buttsoff takes us to see a newly completed first of its kind wooden educational building in the Finnish capital.
- [00:47]
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When you think of a high school, you might picture fluorescent lights, cinder block corridors and a bland facade. But the Helsinki Upper Secondary School of Natural Sciences, locally known as hello, is a school unlike most others. Nestled on the green crest of Kumpulanmaki, the five story wooden building is located in a verdant campus area which is home to laboratories, botanical gardens and geology collections. Here, the school's 900 students study with a focus on natural sciences in a setting literally built of nature. Designed by the local studio, Rondelius Keppo and Salamen Perra, the building is dominated by wood, both on the outside as well as the inside. In fact, the building contains over 1700m3 of wood. But why wood? On one level, it's aesthetic. The interiors feature exposed timber surfaces which, together with generous daylight from the building's large windows, provide a sense of warmth in a building that would otherwise feel institutional. And it goes beyond just the looks. The building even smells of fresh wood. You all know that lovely and relaxing scent. But building a large school out of wood is about more than just an ambiance. The choice of a timber structure offers measurable environmental gains too. Studies indicate that wood based construction in Finland is can reduce the initial stage emissions of new buildings by up to 1/3. In fact, this building's whole life emissions were estimated to be about a fifth lower than the average reference for Finnish educational buildings. From an urban design perspective, that's significant. The cityscape benefits when a major public building shifts away from concrete and steel towards renewable low carbon materials. The building thus becomes both a learning environment and a statement about our urban future. But let's return to the pedagogic side. The school offers two tracks. About one third of students pursue the natural science specialist program, while the remainder follow the general upper secondary education route. Being located in Kumpula, the school's proximity to the aforementioned university facilities and research infrastructure has been greatly enhanced. Shared use of laboratories, auditoria and sporting spaces with the university students creates a richer ecosystem. And then there's the question of how the built environment can support learning. Wood has been praised for its acoustics, air quality and visual comfort. In this building, the soundscape can only be described as very calm. The warm surfaces, the the light filled spaces and the natural textures all contribute to a sense of well being among both the staff and the students. Studies show that the visual appearance of spaces has a great impact on how pleasant they feel and therefore on the students well being and learning. So the school becomes more than a venue, it becomes part of the educational strategy for city builders and educators alike. This is a valuable case study how the physical environment can raise the bar on the intellectual environment. From the outside, the building presents a restrained cubic form only broken by a subtle diagonal recession beneath the roof ledge. It sits clearly within the campus fabric, yet distinguishes itself through its materiality and scale. It's Finland's first five story, fully wooded school of this size. And for the city of Helsinki, the message is public architecture can be at once ambitious, sustainable and beautiful. Schools, after all, are community anchors. When they are designed and built with care and with materials that speak to climate neutrality and with interiors that speak to human comfort, they enhance not only learning, but the urban fabric itself.
- [05:09]
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Tall Stories is a monocle production from the team behind the Urbanist. This episode was written by Petri Buttsoff and produced and edited by David Stevens. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to receive new episodes every week. I'm Andrew Tuck. Goodbye and and thank you for listening, City Lovers.