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.

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