Housing Dreams Realized

Finns just love building houses, or at least dreaming of it. One clear sign of that is the popularity of the annual housing fairs

Somehow it has amazed me for a long time, that these housing fairs are so popular among Finns. There were a few years downturn on the number of visitors, but this year the expectations were indeed exceeded. The organizers were counting on 150 000 sold tickets, instead they sold over 195 000. In addition thousands of the visitors were from abroad, even all the way from China.

The themes were good design, family, community, nature and best ideas. The houses were built respecting the nature around, and the small alley-like streets are bound to promote community and safe environment for the kids.

On the other hand, good design wasn’t that apparent. And what comes to the best ideas, well maybe not al of them really fall under that category. Maybe because of the ever-rising construction costs, not too many houses were just designers wet dreams, but places where one could imagine to live in. Nevertheless, we found only one house which met our high criteria, and could be called well designed.

This episode is also available in a high definition version, the link to the RSS-feed is on the home page.

Ancient Inspirations for Gardening

During the short summer, the gardens flourish in Finland. The inspiration for the set up comes more and more often from far far away.

One of the must visit destinations in China are the numerous gardens and temples. It is quite amazing how the busy and hectic city life is instantly replaced by a peaceful and calm existence when stepping into a garden.

The impression of the gardens is permanent, and some of it was transferred into the local terrace garden. What was accidentally left out of this episode, is the section of stone garden and a small copy of the buddhist pagoda. Really a place of contemplating, with the totally different milieu set by the Finnish winter.