We wish all of our collaborators and the readers of our stories a happy holiday season and a wonderful New Year 2016! We are looking forward to an exciting spring after a well deserved break.
Europan 13 prize ceremony around the corner
Tonight is an exciting night for many young architects. Europan Norway is announcing the winners of Europan 13 and celebrations are held in Oslo. Kaleidoscope didn't participate Europan this time, but we contributed by sending our partner Miia-Liina Tommila to be a member of the Norwegian jury. The jury has found inspiring and competent winners for the record-hitting five sites in Norway and Kaleidoscope congratulates the winners warm-heartedly!
A Tunnel Connecting Helsinki and Tallinn?
The skyline of Tallinn is one of the main ingredients of the city's identity. Opening the shoreline for public would bring more life to the waterfront and strengthen the city's maritime atmosphere. Illustration: Kaleidoscope
The Finnish National broadcasting company YLE has made a short report on the Talsinki workshop held earlier this autumn. The topic of the workshop was the possible infrastructure project turning Tallinn and Helsinki into a more tightly connected twin city. The report is available through YLE Areena here - exploring the possibilites on-site as well as interviewing the participants. Journalist Minna Joenniemi also wrote a story about the five visions created during the workshop, and her reflections are published here. It's all in Finnish, naturally. Luckily you need no language skills for looking at the illustrations, if you are not fluent in Finnish.
Blogging on participatory design
Emmi Keskisarja at the Uusi Kaupunki Studia Generalia event in May 2015. Photograph: Inari Virkkala
Kaleidoscope partner Emmi Keskisarja is reflecting on the role of participatory design in the field of architecture in a recent post at the Finnish Cultural Foundation blog. Emmi is currently working on her doctoral thesis researching design methods, and we are looking forward to see more of her ground breaking work. Those of you able to read in Finnish, take a look here.
Greetings from Tallinn!
Point of departure. / Photograph: Miia-Liina Tommila
This picture seems to capture all the important elements in our Talsinki City Centre workshop contribution: the silhouette of Tallinn, the harbour and the sea, the boats - and the obligatory hot air balloon included in all serious architectural renderings these days! Our past couple of days have been spent working together with Stuudio Tallinn and alongside many Finnish-Estonian teams on the topic of Talsinki tunnel connection under the Gulf of Finland. We also made it to the national news, you can watch the clip here. Our workshop results are displayed on Uusi Kaupunki website, have a look!
Jyväskylä workshop uncovered
Jyväskylä region magazine Keskisuomalainen covers our workshop day.
A lovely writing about our Uusi Kaupunki participatory planning workshop in Jyväskylä appeared in the newspaper Keskisuomalainen today. We were visited by many enthusiastic citizens - as well as the obligatory art stunt pigeons, seen in the background of Emmi. Our work with the market places of Jyväskylä continues now towards design phase based on the ideas we gathered on Saturday, we'll be back! Go and visit the event page on Facebook in the meanwhile: https://www.facebook.com/events/694320054024366/
Uusi Kaupunki + Kaleidoscope is true!
We are thrilled to announce that Kaleidoscope has been taken as a part of Uusi Kaupunki, a collective of young Finnish design offices. Together we are organizing participatory urban design workshops with Finnish cities, out of which the Finnish National Broadcasting company YLE recorded a six episode tv-series "Kaupunki Uusiksi" in 2014: http://yle.fi/aihe/artikkeli/2014/10/08/kaupunki-uusiksi-eli-miten-suunnitella-suomesta-parempi-paikka. Our first workshop is just around the corner, as we are envisioning the new urban spaces of Jyväskylä together with citizens on Saturday 16.5.2015.
Check out www.uusi-kaupunki.fi for more information on the collective and the past projects with different cities. Kaleidoscope is in a good crowd!
Phantom Pain and other stories
Phantom Pain / Soft touch. Illustration: Kaleidoscope
Today we are happy to share this in-depth interview on Finnisharchitecture.fi. Emmi Keskisarja and Miia-Liina Tommila talk about why healing as a medical process can be translated to architecture, what effects it has when you give a building a voice, and how architecture can rejuvenate traumatized urban context. Architecture journalist Anni Vartola asked us challenging questions, we hope you enjoy the read! Find the interview here.
Happy holidays!
We wish everyone a relaxing holiday season and a successful new year. It has been an exciting year for us and we are looking forward to the adventures of 2015!
Santa and his little helpers have taken over Høyblokka!
Kaleidoscope New York event on eOculus
Rick Bell, FAIA, AIANY; Elin Bergithe Rognlie, Consulate General of Norway; Ingrid Moe, Consulate General of Norway; Kati Laakso, Consulate General of Finland in New York; Emmi Keskisarja, Architect; Miia-Liina Tommila, Architect; Caitlin Mehner, Performer; and David Gelles, Performer. Credit: AIANY | Center for Architecture
Here is a lovely reading on our New York evening event written by James Way on eOculus, the AIA New York Chapter online newsletter. Accurate and with clear insight, this article will bring some atmospheres from the evening to those of you who couldn't be there with us. Thank you AIA for making the event possible!