Muurikuja 1 Housing
MUURIKUJA 1 HOUSING
ARK-house Architects
YEAR
2010
LOCATION
Helsingfors, Finland
CATEGORY
Social Housing
Text description provided by architect.
Muurikuja 1 Housing does not attempt to be in harmony with its multifaceted context.
The facades collage of colors, reds, oranges, greens, and yellows stand out against the black wall backdrop.
The new social housing block is situated amidst the existing industrial and office building construction, along with desolate prefabricated housing from 1990.
After the break are more photographs and drawings of this new housing block by ARK-house Architects.
The buildings present a towering front on waterside road, and are noise barrier-like black boxes.
The appearance of the side corridor walls with their randomly organized openings is lightened by the use of laminate panels with a wood grain pattern – a sympathetic imitation material coupled with the large modular-size bricks used to clad the walls.
Green and orange ochre rendered brick walls are broken up by patches of white.
The sand blasted pattern, Huuru, was developed by artist Martti Aiha and truly was an extra feature, born out of sheer will, as there was no budget originally assigned for art in this project.
