Pikku-Finlandia (in English Little Finlandia) is a 2700 m2 wooden temporary event facility in central Helsinki to replace Finlandia Hall, the landmark building by Alvar Aalto, during its three-year renovation. Pikku-Finlandia’s most recognized feature and a key design element is the 95 whole wood columns. The building is implemented from modules which can be disassembled and rebuilt in next place. 

The design project was organized by Aalto University, the City of Helsinki and the Finlandia Hall in fall 2019. It began with a graduate-level joint design studio of Wood Program and Building Design held at the Aalto University Department of Architecture. During one semester at a double studio course, 18 students developed individual design proposals for the temporary building. At the conclusion of the term, the proposal by architecture student Jaakko Torvinen entitled “Finlandia Forest” was chosen as the basis for construction. The winning design was inspired by a Finnish boreal forest with views through trees. Whole untrimmed tree trunks serving as load-bearing columns create forest-like atmosphere, while the design utilizes nature’s own engineering and so reduces processing.

In addition to Jaakko, students Havu Järvelä, Elli Wendelin nee Hirvonen and Stine Skott-Pedersen took part in the second part of the two-stage competition. Jaakko, Havu and Elli continued in the project as Architects in collaboration with professor Pekka Heikkinen and Architects NRT. Simultaneously with the design of Pikku-Finlandia, the Aalto Wood Program surveyed the use of whole trees and built a smaller “Katve” pavilion with two pine columns. The learning was utilised in the construction of Pikku-Finland on a larger scale.

Pikku-Finlandia has 2000 m2 of customer facilities including four multifunctional halls, gallery and cafe. Three of the multifunctional halls can be combined into one large space along with the lobby. The shape of the building is a long rectangular box with a strict grid of natural unprocessed pine trees with branches intact. Natural shapes of the trees and branches give contrast to the straight-forward and minimalist design. The building's long edge is a colonnade, a 127-metre-long covered pathway lined with pines. In the architecture, the colonnade is an allegory for the edge of the forest so it was natural to make it from trees. 

The architects individually selected 95 pine top logs from three forests in Southern Finland as supporting structures. Top logs or crown logs usually end up as pulp or energy wood. On the two-day forest trip, architects Torvinen and Wendelin waded through waist-level snow to find the perfect pines together with professor Heikkinen. The pines were felled without damaging the branches, and the trees were washed with 250 bar pressure washer to remove their bark and cambium layer leaving the hard wood’s smooth surface untouched. 

Building is constructed from wooden moduls which were prefabricated from whole timber, massive CLT panels (cross laminated timber), wooden LVL-hollow-core roof elements and glulam beams. The main contractor was wooden prefabricated element manufacturer FM-Haus Oy. Following the renovation, the building is to be disassembled and rebuilt at new location. To make it easier to disassemble, the module seams have been left visible in the building, the geometry of the elements is simple and the technical installations has been left visible. Pikku-Finlandia will later continue life for example as a school or day-care centre for at least the next 30-50 years. Wooden building acts as carbon store for it’s whole lifetime.