2015
2015
The proposal began with research into the scale and shape of the actual need: roughly 35,000 asylum seekers were expected to arrive in Finland by the end of 2015, mapped by region and country of origin, set against Finland's own considerable stock of vacant space — nearly 500,000 second homes nationally, alongside vacant offices and factory floors concentrated in the Helsinki metropolitan area. Rather than propose new emergency shelter built from scratch, the project argued for a kit of modular units — a structural system, an outer shell, and interior modules — designed to be simple to assemble, cost-efficient, adaptable to multiple uses over time, and inserted directly into that existing vacant stock, from empty ground-floor commercial units to underused residential buildings.
The proposal was explicitly participatory: a network connecting vacant spaces, recycled furniture and everyday objects, and local public and private actors, feeding the modular units into three social programmes — leisure areas, workspaces, and training and learning spaces — designed to draw asylum seekers and host communities into shared use of the same buildings from early in the process, rather than housing conceived and delivered separately from integration. The same modular system was designed to work at multiple scales, from a single inserted unit to a full streetscape, and to serve as either a short-term or long-term housing solution.
Research & Analysis
Concept Development
Spatial Planning & Design
Print & Digital Design
Project Management
Team:
Valeria Granillo, Eva Di Jorio, Luana Iuliani, Lucia Spaccaforno, Liliana Starace.