Housing for the Future

On 15–18 November 2000 the UBC Commission on Urban Planning and the City of Helsinki organised a seminar in Helsinki. The topic was "Housing for the future". The subtitle was "Urban life in our new and renovated districts". We wanted to find out best practice examples from UBC cities in such areas as:

• the architecture of new housing developments
• public design and space in new housing
• renovation of concrete panel and old dwelling buildings
• low and dense housing with own gardens
• lack of land for housing, revival of city structure

UBC cities are in a very different situation. Denmark is famous for its beautiful low and dense housing districts with fine gardens. In Sweden the amount of new flats decreased dramatically in the 1990's. In Stockholm you can find excellent architecture of new city-housing. The population of Helsinki increased in the 1990's with 60.000 inhabitants. We are constructing new housing developments by the sea. We use mostly prefabricated panels and hollow slabs. In many cities the renovation of concrete panel buildings from 1970's has started. In numerous cities there is a huge need of flats renovation, but severe lack of resources.

The seminar was succesfull. We had 43 participants from 23 cities all around the Baltic Sea. We got nine new cities in our network. Seminar presentations were interesting. Ole Östergaard spoke about housing in arhus. Andris Rose informed about renovation of old housing in Riga. Markus Härkäpää presented the housing conditions in EUcities and on the Baltic Rim -results of the research study. Jussi Vuorinen described the Helsinki problems -lack of land in housing. Ulpu Tiuri had a lecture on customisation in open building housing.

In the seminar hall we had exhibition with 20 best practice examples. The exhibition was very popular amond the participants. At the seminar we decided to enlarge the steering committee – the fourth member will come from Riga. Next seminar will be held in Gdansk on 18-21 April 2001.