Naval engagement - Chandlery Museum, Suomenlinna, Helsinki, Finland

Architectural Review, The, June, 1999 by Henry Miles

A chandler's building in Helsinki's island fortress, much altered by time and enemy attrition, is reinterpreted with robust sympathy.

Suomenlinna(1) was built to guard the mouth of Helsinki's huge natural harbour in the eighteenth century by the great Swedish military architect Augustin Ehrensvard(2) before the city was envisioned as the capital of Finland.(3) Suomenlinna was of great strategic importance. On the approaches to St Petersburg, it straddles a cluster of islands with an intricately woven network of daunting rubble bastions, curtain walls and ravelins punctuated by austere ashlar NeoClassical openings. In its heyday as the Gibraltar of the North, it was the exemplar of absolutely up-to-date defensive technology, yet now the huge battered stone defences are romantically overgrown, and most of the inner buildings they protected are green mounds. The fortress fell without a shot being fired when Russia seized Finland from Sweden in 1808. But in 1855, many of the buildings were demolished by mortar fire from the combined British and French fleets which attacked in a sideshow of the Crimean War. Some of the structures were repaired by the Russians, then by the newly free Finns after 1920. They were partly destroyed again by bombing in the chaos of 1944.

For all this violence and destruction, and its symbolism of rule by others, Suomenlinna is special for the Finns.(4) The buildings that remain are carefully preserved and used as museums. The latest to be converted is the Inventory Chamber, which was originally built as a chandlery between 1778 and 1783.(5) An elegant three-storey Neo-Classical block with a central pedimented portico faced the sea. Later, it was rather incongruously terminated at its northern end by a rough log building inclined to the main axis. The Crimean War bombardment severely damaged the Swedish Classical block, and the Russians restored it in sparely functional fashion, two storeys without the portico; it became in effect a row of five warehouses. In the destruction of 1944, the log building went up in flames. The building was subsequently shortened and continued to be a naval store.

Now, the old building has been restored as a series of galleries and an auditorium, and a new part has been added at the north end to provide entrance, shop, utilities and so on. It is on the site of the log structure and takes its axis. New takes other cues from old by using the same sort of red brick, having a clear structure (though primarily steel rather than timber), and being very clear in its organization. The difficult junction between old and new is managed by making a big steel portal that provides the main axial roof support of the new; it straddles the old, welcoming its north end under the generous roof. A steel order, expressed externally as free-standing columns in front of the glass entrance and as engaged ones in the body of the wall, supports rafters that bear on the big portal. Modern steel and huge pine members reclaimed from parts of the eighteenth-century building work together in the new structure.

The glazed entrance is part of a transparent hinge between old and new, with a spare steel spiral stair acting as metaphorical pin. Beyond, is the granite from which Finland grows, and a slope rising to the Imperial yellow of the remaining barrack buildings. To the left of the entrance is the reception desk, behind which is the shop. Above these is slung a second storey of offices, visually separated from the main shell and with light chutes on both sides. The sectional gesture is intended to evoke the ghost of the old log building, which as a rigging store, would have had such a hovering place in which to keep spars.

To the right of the entrance is the enfilade of the old building. Here intervention has been kept to a minimum. Big warehouse spaces do of course usually make good galleries, and alterations have been made obvious, as the most recent episodes of a story which is clearly told in the brave and often tormented fabric. Huge pine beams are supported on massive timber columns; outer walls remain roughly whitewashed brick; changes in bond and joint give a subtle portrait of the history of the place.

1 Sveaborg in Swedish.

2 Augustin Ehrensvard (1710-1772) lies in the middle of his creation in a magnificent Neo-Classical tomb reputedly designed by his king Gustavus III (with J. T. Sergel).

3 Under Swedish rule, the capital was Abo (Turku) on the west coast opposite Sweden on the Gulf of Bothnia. Under the Russians, it was moved to Helsinki, which guards the Gulf of Finland that terminates at St Petersburg.

4 And one of the country's four World Heritage sites.

5 Probably by Fredrik Henrik af Chapman (1721-1808) whose work on the other side of the Gulf of Bothnia at Karlskrona was shown in AR December 1998, pp49-53.

Architect

Laiho-Pulkkinen-Raunio

Design team

Mikko Pulkkinen, Tiitta Itkonen

Interior design

Philip Kronqvist

Photographer

Studio Voitto Niemela