Light plays a big role at the new Länsisalmi substation

Can a substation be architecturally interesting? Yes you can! The visually interesting, steel and rust-colored Länsisalmi fresh substation plays with light. Sweco’s structural and building services engineers have been involved in the design of the beautiful building. Sweco was also responsible for construction during construction. Lighting plays a very central role in the building.

The task of the renovated Länsisalmi substation is mundane but important: it secures the capital’s electricity supply. Behind the beautiful shell and magnificent arc is state-of-the-art technology and enormous power that can transmit electricity to almost 800,000 residents of the metropolitan area.

So the building itself is quite different from boring metal frames. It consists of an arched landscape portal about 50 meters high and transformer buildings whose lighting in the dark evenings shines like beautiful lanterns. Owner Fingrid wanted to invest in his new substation because it is so prominent. The building and its lighting have also been recognized internationally when the site was awarded late last year at the World Architecture Festival in Amsterdam.

Electricity and the light that is essentially associated with it have naturally served as an inspiration for the architectural concept and material choices of the building. The main designer of the winning project, Bratislav Toskovic from Parviainen Arkkitehdit Oy, thought of large, concrete buildings as lanterns. “The energy flowing through the substation and the flow of people passing by run in parallel in an area where we wanted to create an interesting and memorable building complex in the cityscape.”

The design of the building has been a unique experience for other designers as well. It is no wonder when designing a building that will serve 800,000 people but where no one lives or resides.

The substation consists of three buildings; the new transformer bunker, the substation building and the Corten steel landscape portal. “Especially the landscape portal, which is large in size and exceptional in shape and material, was a really interesting and new kind of challenge for the structural designer. It worked well with all designers, the workshop and the installers, and utilized the latest design tools, such as data modeling and laser scanning, ”says Anssi Mäntynen from Sweco, who worked as the project manager for the project.

The target was also a new kind of experience for Sweco’s building services engineers. “Several of the sites are challenging, but this differed in an interesting way from the basic design. The project had a lot of technical design tasks related to earthing and substation drainage, and we used the most modern TATE solutions in our design, for example in emergency lighting and HVAC control, ”concludes Ricardo Weibel Avendano, Sweco’s project engineer.