Otteita tutkimuksesta
   http://www.nba.fi/tiedostot/e82f75a4.pdf




Grounds of Good Neighbourhood – Structured Inquiry and Research in Finnish Wooden Towns

Risto Suikkari
Architect, researcher
Univ. of Oulu, Dep. of Architecture
Kalle Reinikainen
Sociologist, senior assistant
Univ. of Oulu, Dep. of Education

Introduction
Throughout its history the Finnish town has characteristically been a wooden town originating over five hundred years ago. At the end of the 19th century, stone apartment buildings started to rise in the town centres of a few rapidly industrialised towns. Even in these towns, construction in the wooden town tradition continued immediately outside the core centre. This long tradition of town-like timber construction began to die out with the coming of new ideas and ideals of the Functionalism in the 1930´s. From that on the history of wooden towns has included both contradictions and decline. During their history wooden towns has been damaged by wars and town fires but worst crisis for wooden towns was the so-called urban refurbishment of 1960´s and 1970´s when total town parts were demolished. Reassessment of the values of the Nordic wooden towns has been started just quite recently. At the same time the concept of wooden town has been brought up as a research target. In this process the importance of local knowledge (views of the inhabitants) has increased in addition to different traditional professional orientated evaluations and townscape analysis.

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Finnish wooden towns today
Despite all the destruction there are still several quite well preserved wooden town milieus to be found in Finland. They are usually considered as active and pleasant neighbourhoods. The value of the wooden towns is not based on historical importance of individual buildings but the importance of the whole concept as a continual process and active environment with many positive qualities. In these milieus one can find various positive elements that could even be utilised in current urban planning: for instance, the small-scale and dense building close to human scale. The common denominator is the latticed nature of timber – breaking down the larger surfaces into smaller ones.

Even though the traditional town concept has changed, the scale of man is still the same. We can assume that the boundaries of our near environment, closely linked with our perceptions and basic needs, have not changed greatly. It is thereby justified to say that some characteristics of old wooden towns could still be utilized even in modern town planning.
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The preliminary work was started during the summer 2002 by launching the structured inquiry in six wooden dwelling areas and two stone town areas from different periods. During the summer 2003 the inquiry was launched in Kalliomäki town part of the Finnish of SuHiTo -project pilot town Forssa - former workers town part constructed at the turn of the 19th and 20th century. The second target was the historical centre of Raahe – an old coast town in Northern Ostrobothnia, which was built after a great fire of 1810 and is nowadays suffering from a crisis in relation to development and protection plans. Results from the earlier studies are used as comparative material (figure 1).

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About cosiness of the area in general
One of the basic questions of the inquiry was the question of qualities of environment (experienced cosiness) in different areas during the summer and winter. Winter estimations appeared to be parallel but with lower values than summer time ones. Correlations to most of the other factors were compared with this question. In general, the old wooden towns obtained very positive summer time evaluations. In Old Porvoo over 30 % considered their town part as perfect ideal environment. In Tammisaari the count was astonishingly 55 % and in Uusikaupunki and Forssa 12 %. About 90 % of the response in old wooden towns considered their dwelling areas at least rather cosy. In Kalliomäki, Forssa the figure was 86 % and in Raahe it was the lowest - 70 %. The myth of historic milieu as a barrier hampering every day life can be buried.

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Importance of local knowledge
In drawing tasks the inhabitants were asked to draw the places important for local identity (darker blue line in pictures 4 and 5) and just important places (lighter blue line). In old towns in general quite many considered the whole town part important for local identity. However in Raahe this expression was not very strong, indicating there are some special questions involved. Public buildings as church and town hall and public squares were noticed in all target towns.

Pictures 4 and 5. Expressions of local identity in old centre of Raahe (left) and in Kalliomäki, Forssa (right).

In the question of local identity, the importance of views of the inhabitants was pointed out. Local people often see their close environment differently than town planning professionals. For example status of the main street of Kalliomäki town part of Forssa was seen differently between town planning professionals and local citizens. The unique comb shaped town part was given a new town plan in 1927, in which one of the transverse alleys was widened to form a new main street Mäkikatu. New buildings should have been erected on both sides of the street in town like manner. In fact this was never done. Only the street was widened. The street appeared to be the most important light traffic route to the town centre but it was also named as the most beautiful street of the area by the inhabitants (picture 6). This raises up the question if the street gives more credit to the environment if it is developed as a park-like rout based on the present situation?

Pictures 6 and 7. Mäkikatu – the most beautiful street of Kalliomäki, Forssa (left). Rantakatu in Raahe was noted as the most beautiful street and the building in the corner as the most beautiful new building (right). Photos R.S. and K.R.

In old centre of Raahe the contradictory ideals of development are reflected in the townscape in the amount of empty plots and neglected old houses (red colour in the map in picture 8). In the map grey colour indicates plots without any dwellings. It seems business is taken over old town centre. This raises up the question if the old town centre should be seen as an inhabited active town part itself or a service centre to rest of the widely spread town?

Pictures 8 and 9. Habitation map of Raahe (left). Koulukatu -street has become of some kind of demarcation line between preserved town structure and new commercial centre. Photo R.S.

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