Helsinki is Turning Me into a Bag Lady

This week has been full of reliving Rovaniemi, doing tons of laundry, and carrying tons of bags up and down the streets of Helsinki.  On Tuesday, our furniture design class was held at Arabia (where our teacher is currently a graduate student) in order to hear a guest lecture and see their facilities.  On the tram ride there we found a Martina (a restaurant we went to twice during our time in Rovaniemi), so that was a fun discovery.  After class I took the tram to the metro to a bus to get to our campus and ate lunch.  On my way to the library afterwards, I took some pictures of Aalto University.

This is Dipoli, the Aalto University student union building.  Most weekdays this is where I eat lunch.  My favorite dish, so far, is turkey soup.  I'm quite burnt out on all the potatoes, but the bread is still fantastic.  Pretty much anything in brown sauce (yes, that's what it called and is the Finnish version of mystery sauce except it somehow has plenty color but little to no flavor) should be avoided if at all possible.

Landmark building of Aalto University.  On the right is the architecture building.

On my way into the library to try to look at a magazine for a Building Systems project.

Wednesday started with a walking tour with our history teacher.  It was sooooo frigidly cold and, unfortunately, most of the tour was outside.  Some of the buildings, however, were cool and it was really neat a couple days later to look through a book of buildings in Helsinki and to realize I've been in a fair number of them already!

Hotel Linna is about a 10-15 minute walk from our apartment and was built as the student union for Aalto University (a.k.a the old Dipoli).  After the school moved, it was eventually sold.  Sadly, for the school/students, property values in this area became much more valuable after the sale but now it is a hotel with quite lovely character.

Everybody hanging out before the tour officially started.

This has to be the world's largest door handle!

This is a market near the water front which is currently under refurbishment.  I believe it often hosts designers' work for sale.

After the tour was lunch again and just enough time to print for the first time and mount our assigned images to foamcore in time for studio.  Class involved four straight hours of discussing our images and words chosen to describe Finland and then the United States.  Individuality was the center of conversation for most of that time.  It was very interesting, but did get a little bit long.

After class I came home and made up leftovers from the night before - doesn't it look tasty??  The bread came out of my oven.  They have this nifty product that you can buy and then bake for 10 minutes making it fantastic....so fantastic that I ate 2 loaves in 2 nights.

This week is apparently "skiing holiday" for the country of Finland so our Building Systems professor out of town skiing which gave the nine of us a four day weekend.  Sally, Matt, and Todd all flew to London at 6:45am on Thursday morning to stay with Todd's friends.  Thursday I tried to finish most of my errands for the weekend: took my dry cleaning to the cleaners, went to the Architecture museum and found resources for my architectural history paper (and a lovely book of Finnish architecture with sites I'd like to see while I'm here!), picked up a package at the mail post office, took photos and measurements of chairs I liked in the Artek store, entered the Cathedral in Senate Square, and bought both fresh salmon and some traditional Finnish bread.

This was designed by Aalto and the shell is the basis for my current chair design for class.  It looks really simple, but is surprisingly comfortable.  Developing the "sled" that I would like this shell to sit in is still something I'm brainstorming.

These steps were clearly built long, long before codes established rise-run requirements.

The view of Senate Square from the top of those steps.  

Inside the building

It wouldn't work well if people had children or needed to go to the bathroom, but I find these door pews quite fun.

Isn't this organ amazing?!

Apparently these kids are indestructible, they went flying down this steep hill and often flopped at the bottom to the concrete and then quickly ran back up the hill.

This is the bread I bought!

After a snack of this lovely (and rather tasty) bread and hot chocolate, I worked on a studio research assignment and then began working on dinner.  The internet claimed that salmon could be baked at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 10 minutes for every inch of fish.  This, is incorrect.  I was not thrilled with my baking abilities but will definitely try again.  After about 20 minutes and multiple checks, the salmon was essentially done and ready to eat.  I was very glad that I bought and put lemon pepper on on the fish.

Look at that pretty fish!!