Child health clinic and social services under the same roof at Kamppi Family Centre
Child health clinic and social services under the same roof at Kamppi Family Centre
The newly built Kamppi Family Centre provides centralised social and child health clinic services for children, young people and families with children in an area where a larger social and healthcare service centre is planned by the City of Helsinki. The renovation of an existing office building allowed for a swift opening of the Family Centre.
The Kamppi Family Centre started its operations in an office building renovated for the purpose in the centre of Helsinki in autumn 2021. About 8,000 families receive extensive social and health services under the same roof. Functions were brought together from the child health clinic service areas of Töölö, Laakso and Viiskulma. “Premises for the Family Centre were needed on short notice in Kamppi, where a larger health and welfare service centre is planned,” says Juha Leoni, project manager at the City of Helsinki.
The old premises did not support the family centre operating model, as such. “Instead of separate rooms, the users wanted to have more common group and break rooms, quiet rooms for work that requires concentration and phone rooms for handling customer calls,” says Markus Makkonen, principal designer at Sweco. The consultation rooms were designed to be as convertible and multi-purpose as possible. “The interior design and furniture of the rooms can be modified later, which also contributes to well-being at work.”
The colour scheme of the family centre was inspired by the original look of the office building, but with a modern take. “The office building, completed in 1986, became significantly more luminous during the renovation, and the comfort of the premises has also been praised by the city’s residents,” Leoni says.
Customers are welcomed by a warm atmosphere already in the ground floor’s lobby cafeteria. Comfort is increased by the large windows opening towards the street and the waiting rooms named after different animals. “However, children’s attention often turns towards the bronze sculpture in the lobby, a baby rhinoceros shaped by artist Lotta Mattila, on which the children can ride,” Makkonen says.
Interiors were torn down to ensure functionality
General planning focused on functional modifications, and load-bearing structures did not need to be reinforced. “Instead, the location in the centre of Helsinki posed some challenges to work phasing and logistics at the site,” says Juuso Erkkilä, who is responsible for project management and construction at Sweco. It was impossible to avoid noisy work phases completely, but cooperation with the neighbouring properties was remarkably smooth.
There were not many surprises, which Erkkilä attributes to a wise decision by the client: all partition wall structures of the interior were dismantled in the middle of the project. “Simultaneously, the site was laser scanned, which allowed for the creation of a surface model to ensure compatibility.”
Makkonen praises the knowledge of the client’s own architects and design management about the requirements of the healthcare field. “Particularly the acoustics of the premises were considered jointly, because the transmission of sound from the consultation rooms to the corridors or other rooms must be prevented to ensure privacy.”
Splitting of the renovation into two contracts was a speciality of the project. The Urban Environment Spaces service was responsible for the planning and project management of the interior renovation and its coordination with the facade renovation ordered by the property owner, which was started earlier. “The intersections of the two contracts functioned well, and everything was settled in good cooperative spirit and in accordance with the agreed timeframe”, Leoni says, delighted.
The tight schedule was met
The schedule of the project was unconditional, as the Family Center was to be opened on an exact date. General planning was started in May 2020, and dismantling was scheduled for the autumn. The pace of the project was ensured by tactically setting the contractor’s deadline to the next midsummer.
“This gave a margin of 1.5 months for additional work, modifications and the correction of any shortcomings,” Erkkilä says. In addition, a special acceptance procedure was used in the project. “The acceptance and operational testing of the building service contracts were already started in February 2020 and continued weekly during the entire project.”
According to Leoni, sticking to the schedule was, indeed, one of the finest achievements of the project. “The value of our success is increased by the quick launch of the project and the limited time available for planning.”