Architecture News Plus (ANP) – Architecture and Design Magazine

Talo Kekkapää

This is a project by Arkkitehtitoimisto POOK and it is located at Espoo, Finland. There are nine images for Talo Kekkapää.

: © Antti Hahl

Project images

Designer's statement

Talo Kekkapää - Wood in Rock - Experimental wooden building.

This experimental wooden building is located in the historic rural area of northern Espoo in Finland. The neighbourhood consists of old farm buildings, horse stables, open fields with quite steep and partly rocky forest islands. We wanted to set the new building in harmony with the existing approximate and simple environmental scale, but with contemporary design and functional layout.

An important variant on design has been the precious nature of the site that consists of two separate sides: The meditative back side with lichen-moss-covered rocks was left untouched. The sauna building located on this side was built by hand without any major machinery in order to preserve the nature. The front side of the site is more active including the entrance way, children's play area and more fertile soil with variety of trees.

The building combines housing, work, children's care and play into a rhythm of functions with a buffering and contacting zone. During daytime the housing part serves the children's nursing. The separate working facilities orientate toward quiet forest. The functions and people are brought together in the contacting zone that serves for having lunch together, negotiations and sound insulation.

Technically the design resulted into a wooden building that is partly inserted into rock, the structure is more related to wooden halls than houses providing freedom of open plan. We wanted to keep the building envelope hygroscopic and homogeneous which generated one experimental element of creating a way to use wood in rock. The solution enables also the easy maintenance of technical installations that is crucial in creation of sustainable buildings. The nature of the buildings main frame led us into use of inclined structural screwing in wooden connections.

Technical features

Wood in rock: ventilated wooden structure in Nordic climate
Inclined structural WT-srewing
Geo-therm
The mainframe: gluelam, LVL, plywood

Details/Credits

Location: Espoo, Finland
Project Name: Talo Kekkapää - Wood In Rock
Project yype: Office and single family house
Principal designer: POOK Architects’ Office (Katariina Rautiala, Pentti Raiski)
Civil engineers: Virpi Ranta, Mari Heino, Hannu Hirsi (consulting), Risto Mäkipuro (expert)
Site area: 4.300 m2
Built-up Area: Total ~400 bmr2 (main building with a house and an office+sauna building+storage and workshop
Completion: June 2006
Photographs: Antti Hahl