Väritehtaankatu 8

The client is one of the most important owners and developers of office and business premises in Finland. Sweco Architects is an old partner of Sponda, and Väritehtaankatu deepens the cooperation further. Objectives in accordance with Sponda’s strategic focus areas, i.e. customer experience and environmental responsibility, were central in this project, too.

The task was to create an office and business building in a logistics hub in the Helsinki Metropolitan area next to the station on the main railway track that would take full advantage of its optimal location and offer a headquarters-level setting for even the most challenging tenants.

The project was especially challenging to design, due to its difficult foundation conditions, the immediate vicinity of the main track, and first and foremost, the high goals with regard to the cityscape – the building plays a key role in turning the developing urban structure around the station into a harmonious whole. Nevertheless, the high profile office and business building had to be implemented cost-effectively.

This is a hybrid building, i.e. a building with public interiors as well as business and office premises, designed for an unusually challenging location. The building is attached to the connecting bridge over the tracks from the Tikkurila station, and the Itä-Tikkurila station traffic passes through it. Factors related to the cityscape and traffic streams made the project a focus of special attention in the cooperation with the authorities. The key solutions were reached through collaborative urban planning with the City of Vantaa.

There is a grocery shop, a car park and the office entrance lobby on the ground floor. A gym and business premises can be found on the second floor. The following four floors are mainly dedicated to office premises. The whole is crowned by a controlled arrangement of components with mass on the roof, containing building service facilities.

Solving the material palette of the building in a way that made it possible to use cost-effective solutions without compromising the imposing architectural expression or choices that connect the building to its local context was particularly rewarding.

In the design, the façades on the outer shell of the building are clad in anodised aluminium panels with a wavy shape. They create a dialogue with the commercial buildings on the western side of the tracks and create a close connection with the building and the centre of Tikkurila, while expressing the functions of the building together with the ribbon-like façade treatment. The surfaces of the courtyard side and the façades on the ground floor are umber antiqued concrete that links the building to the colour palette characteristic of Tikkurila, dominated by brick.

In accordance with the client’s environmental responsibility strategy, the building has been granted the LEED Gold environmental certificate.

After completion, its users include private hospitals and medical centres, an apartment hotel as well as the head office of Lehto Group.

The cooperation with Sponda goes on, because continuing with Sweco Architects was an easy choice for the client – phase II of the construction project is currently being planned.