Käpylän Posteljooni

Relaxedly modern

The apartment building designed by Anttinen Oiva Arkkitehdit for Helsinki’s Käpylä neighbourhood is both grounded in its context and a clear departure from it. On the site where previously the post office stood, Selina Anttinen, Vesa Oiva and their team have created a highly original building. The new complex is the latest addition to a district which was originally built in the 1920s as a garden city, with gorgeous wooden houses in a green setting. The idyllic neighbourhood changed in the 1950s without losing its distinct character, when it became Olympic Village for the 1952 Games. To temporarily house athletes, new apartment buildings were constructed, which after the event were added to the city’s housing stock. These Olympic apartment buildings introduced a new approach to the neighbourhood, merging the modern principles of open planning with a relatively traditional architectural form. Typical for this architecture is the light stucco facades with regular patterns of small windows and pitched roofs.