SINEBRYCHOFF

The morning of Vappu, Finland’s annual celebration of rebirth and rejuvenation, I was wandering around Punavuori, a neighborhood in the southwest of Helsinki. From a park in the middle I could see a smokestack above everything else, surrounded entirely by new housing complexes. The source of the tower was buried somewhere in the midst of the new construction.



The housing complex.

The smoke stack in the center of the housing complex.

Walking though the housing complex.


Eventually, after cutting though some garden terraces, children’s playground equipment, and someone’s drying laundry, I found myself in the middle of a courtyard, standing at the base of the unused smokestack, surrounded by the brick walls of an old factory.





The Sinebrychoff brewery, built in the 1840s and 1870s, is comprised of a series of brick warehouses and boiler rooms used for brewing beer. Eventually the brewery moved elsewhere and in 1970 the complex was converted into Sampo life insurance offices, designed by SARC architects.
The brick walls reveal their many uses over the years as openings have been bricked in and remnants of rooflines remain on the brick. The new additions are made distinct and read separately from the old buildings. Although much of the circulation had to be changed internally to bring the buildings to a human scale, the entrance and main lobbies maintained the large double and triple height space that at one point housed the boilers.
SARC also designed many of the residential apartment complexes that surround the Sinebrychoff brewery complex.

The front of the Brewery looking down Bulevardi toward the harbor.

Elevation of the Sampo Life Insurance office renovation. The original brewery also opened up to the street because it ran 24 hours a day and brought life to the street around the clock.
The screening of the windows on the ground floor.

The smokestack situated in the courtyard between the old brewhouse and the new housing complex.

The circulation connection made between the insurance offices and old warehouse.

The Sampo Life Insurance buildings adjacent to two of the older brewery buildings.

Remnants of old rooms, windows, and buildings can still be seen on the facades of the brick buildings.

Site plan of the entire complex, with the housing encircling the brewery.

An interior

The roof line of an old storage building that used to connect to this building can be seen on this façade and the door that at one point led into it.