OULU

Oulu

After traveling for weeks around the northern parts of Finland, scarcely seeing a town of more then a couple thousand people, coming upon Oulu feels like entering a giant cosmopolis. Well perhaps that is an overstatement, but Oulu is Finland’s largest northern city, home to its second largest university, and growing rapidly due to technology companies like Nokia. The activity on the streets is constant thanks to an intricate parks and recreation system intertwined within the city and local markets, and the presence of outside bars and cafés scattered about the main squares.


Oulu Market Place

Oulu began as a trading town exporting furs and salmon. Later it became an industrial city containing leather factories, and a leading producer of the tar used to protect wooden ships. It is also home to the former pulp mill at Toppila that was designed by Alvar Aalto. Large parts of Oulu’s industrial past still remain in the form of buildings or clear footprints of where they were; they continue to contribute their presence to the city of today.

The abandon Toppila pulp mill. According to an architecture student at the university of Oulu the mill is difficult to reuse due to the strict preservation guidelines of the existing building, but it is often used in architecture studios.

The island Pikisaari located north west of Oulu’s main square was home to many small industries such as sawmills, steel foundries, and wool factories. In the 1980s these abandoned industrial buildings were renovated and became home to local artists, musicians, and craftspeople. The island is not easily accessible by car, only by bicycle and foot. Walking along the historical rows of old factories, without any cars around, feels as if you have gone back in time a century or more.

A present day street in Pikisaari.
A view of Pikisaari Island connected to the main city center by a pedestrian bridge.

The Oulu City Art Museum is located in the center of a collection of old industrial buildings that used to be the leather factory, Veljekset Astrõm Oy. The original red brick buildings were designed by Birger Federley in 1921. When the factory shut down in the 1950s the university’s botany department and library took it over. The main building housed the dye and glue rooms. It later became home to a Tea and Coffee company. In 1988 the building was renovated and large changes were made in its external appearance and internal spaces in order to create the City Art Museum. The architectural firm Jorma Teppo Ky mixed the old brick building with opposing postmodern interventions that are referred to as a “light play of the new versus the heavy old.” Looking at the elevation ‘light’ would not be the word I would choose to describe the new part of the building. It feels rather heavy and competes with the brick masses in the elevation. Internally the skylights in the back of the building do help give the newer spaces a light feel but it is still unclear as to what are the new versus old spaces.


A side elevation of the Art Museum.
The front of the Art Museum consisting of the old brick building and the new postmodern addition lower to the ground.
Gallery in the art Museum
A view of one of the Astrom Buildings located across from what is today the City Art Museum. The building is home to a variety of offices and has been considered as a potential extension for the Art Museum.

Plaque on the front of the Astrõm building depicting the old use of the building
Elevation of the Armstom main building

The areas around the old industrial structures such as the Astrom buildings have been converted to city parks. The central location of these buildings in the city along the Oulujoki river creates an ideal location for city parks. The hydroelectric plant and dam at the mouth of this river includes a fish ladder that is not at all the stereotypical fish ladder of concrete steps up the side of a dam. This ladder has been turned into an intricate stream that winds through the park with eddy pools and monitoring stations along the way recording the statistics of the fish that use it. The Armsto complex of buildings has taken on many new uses and has been transformed and opened up to the park with restaurants, libraries, bicycle paths, and a variety of small business offices.
The ‘fish ladder’ which is more of a meandering stream through a park.
The fish ladder with the dam in the background.


The leather factory buildings and their new additions, which lie along the side of the river
A renovated factory building which is now a café, opening to a courtyard in the park.


The industrial remnants of the city have become recreation and civic centers for the public in the heart of the city, contributing to the lively feel that Oulu has today.