Lippulaiva shopping centre reopening bigger than ever

Owned by Citycon, the Lippulaiva shopping and service centre is turning over a new leaf in its history as a fully overhauled, bigger and more versatile Lippulaiva opens its doors in Espoonlahti.

Citycon opened its new shopping and service centre in Espoonlahti at the end of March to replace the old Lippulaiva shopping centre that was built in 1993 and demolished in 2017. The new three-storey Lippulaiva urban centre features shops such as K-Supermarket, Prisma, Lidl and Tokmanni grocery stores, as well as 100 different businesses. The modern shopping centre also makes the lives of city residents easier by providing diverse restaurant, exercise and well-being services, as well as a regional library.

Sweco joined the project in November 2018. It made sense to phase the design and construction of the massive urban centre into 12 sections. “That is why we also needed more than 10 different construction, landscape and placement permits,” explains Senior Structural Engineer Jarmo Hanninen from Sweco. Even the shopping centre section was divided into several parts. “All of the sections are independently stiffened and connected to one another with expansion joints.”

Lippulaiva will also serve as an important traffic hub in Espoo, as it also features a bus terminal for connection traffic and a metro station that will be completed in 2023. “The underground parking facility of the shopping centre was designed to be built on top of the West Metro station platforms,” says Project Manager Christoffer Enberg from Sweco. Accommodating roughly 1,300 cars, the parking facility is half a kilometre long, spanning the entire length of the shopping centre.

Project well under control

The hybrid project was quickly up and running, with an exceptionally narrow project organisation at first. For example, no separate project management contractor was involved. “All parties displayed exceptional flexibility right there at the start, and we designers also had unusually many project management duties and responsibilities related to scheduling and the work order,” Hanninen says.

The tight schedule of the project required exceptional personnel resourcing. The amount and focus of the design work was monitored on a monthly basis at joint meetings with the client. “The design quality assurance and project management efforts were resounding successes,” comments a pleased Hanninen. “The structural engineering processes were completed on schedule.”

Shorter construction time through frame solutions

Once Sweco joined the project, previously developed structural solutions were rethought from a new perspective. “For example, we wanted to change the apartment sizes of the residential buildings to be built on top of the shopping centre,” Enberg says. The original plan was to build the parking facility and the bus terminal with element structures, but Sweco’s designers suggested using a massive post-tensioned reinforced concrete slab. This made it possible to start construction, regardless of the spatial solutions of the residential buildings above.

Enberg says that using a post-tensioned reinforced concrete slab was the most economical solution from the perspective of the project schedule and other boundary conditions. “It also enabled us to ensure sufficient space for building services, and the structure was watertight without separate water insulation.”

The same solution also facilitated an exceptional construction order. The idea was to leave one intermediate floor unbuilt during the early stages to make it possible to build the upper levels in a two-storey space with larger machinery. “Thanks to this solution, the schedule for frame construction was unaffected by the excavation and plumbing work on the base floor.”

Adaptability as the starting point for design

When it comes to shopping centres, the only permanent thing is change, so the adaptability of the facilities was set as a requirement by Citycon and the building control authority of Espoo, and it was also the most important boundary condition for the frame solution of Lippulaiva. Adaptability was ensured with a WQ truss beam frame, which Sweco has utilised in several shopping centre buildings.

“The truss beams facilitate a sufficiently tall spatial solution and more freedom in the design and routing of building services,” Hanninen says. The truss beams also facilitate a quick design process and project schedule, as the structural engineering processes are not bound to the schedules of other design processes.

At Lippulaiva, Sweco was also responsible for the structural engineering of the six residential buildings being built on top of the urban centre. Four of them have Citycon as the design client and Skanska as the contractor, while the design and construction of the remaining two is commissioned by Hausia. In total, the apartment towers will have roughly 550 apartments. “Hybrid construction on top of the shopping centre is well suited to the needs of the fastest-growing urban centre in the metropolitan area,” Hanninen concludes.

The opening ceremony of Lippulaiva took place on Thursday 31 March 2022.

Picture: Citycon