Close to the ground, eyes on the horizon
Small projects have the potential to act as prototypes for new sustainable technologies and lifestyles. Thus, the Small Interventions issue focuses on the margins of the architectural field and through them explores approaches that could have broader applications.
Small-scale projects are sometimes described as the undergrowth of architecture, from which new ideas and future trends grow. This has been the basis for our journal’s long-standing tradition of regularly publishing issues that focus on various types of small projects: single-family homes, saunas and summer cottages, apartment renovations, restaurant interiors, kiosks, petrol stations and outdoor stage canopies. For emerging architects, these projects have often provided their first opportunity to showcase their talents, while more experienced professionals have been able to experiment with solutions that would otherwise have been dismissed as too unconventional. Among the projects presented in the journal, a large number of small classics of Finnish architecture have emerged, from Villa Warén (Erik Bryggman 1933) to holiday home Ararat (Georg Grotenfelt 1985) and from Bar Chat Doré (Birger Carlstedt and Karl Malmström 1929) to the standard kiosks of the City of Helsinki (a.men 1995).
The global environmental crisis nevertheless forces us to ask how meaningful it really is to work on such small individual projects. Shouldn’t all resources be directed towards developing solutions and methods that can be quickly scaled up for widespread use? The small scale of the projects may also create the illusion that they somehow automatically represent ecological, local and humane architecture. This is often the case when looking at individual projects, but even small brooks can become large rivers. For example, according to a study commissioned by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in 2024, summer cottages account for almost three percent of household greenhouse gas emissions in Finland.
The justification for small projects should therefore be sought in their potential to act as prototypes for new sustainable technologies and lifestyles. Many of the principles of ecological construction that have since become widespread were first developed in small experimental buildings, a good example being architect Bruno Erat’s own house in Espoo from 1979. Inspired by this and similar pioneering work in eco-construction, we have mapped out what kind of carbon-neutral building prototypes have been implemented across Europe in recent years and the new creative possibilities they open up for architects.
The justification for small projects should be sought in their potential to act as prototypes for new sustainable technologies and lifestyles.
The other feature articles in this issue delve into the margins of the architectural field and through them explore approaches that could have broader applications. In her recent doctoral dissertation, Pijatta Heinonen has studied areas occupied for the use of protest, where occupants have been allowed to implement their own housing ideas without regard to societal norms and regulations. In her article, she considers how such direct democracy, which enables residents to express themselves, fits with the management of the urban fabric, an aspect traditionally emphasised in urban planning.
Merve Ünlü, in turn, approaches the topic through the concept of urban joy. She connects it above all to small interventions in the public space, such as skate parks and saunas built by city residents on their own initiative – and often without permission. They are constantly in danger of being trampled on by large-scale urban development, but Ünlü also recognizes another kind of threat: the overly eager integration of spontaneously emerging practices into official urban policies and branding. For example, street art, which began as a semi-illegal subculture, has within a short period of time been diluted into harmless facade decoration.
Home refurbishments also fall on the fringes of recognised architectural design, even though they account for a significant portion of the total volume of the construction industry – in fact, the history of the Finnish Architectural Review includes only one issue, from 1997, devoted entirely to them. In her article, Sara Camponez examines home refurbishments as laboratories of everyday life, where the sometimes quirky wishes of the client, tight budgets and the physical limitations of the spaces may lead to solutions that would never be possible in conventional housing production. From an environmental perspective, however, renovations are associated with many contradictions: adapting spaces to changing needs contributes to extending the lifecycle of buildings, but at the same time, completely usable building components and the natural resources and cultural meanings associated with them may be destroyed.
In line with the theme of this issue, the presented projects are also of greater significance than their size alone would indicate. The selection of six projects can be thought of as today’s version of the traditional summer issues of the Finnish Architectural Review, which used to present new single-family houses, sauna cabins and holiday homes. A couple of such projects have made the cut this time too, but the main focus is on projects that have renovated and expanded existing buildings. These include, for example, the conversion of a prison maintenance building and a store warehouse into residences, an additional wing to a house that used to be a hat shop, and the upgrade of the auditorium of Madrid’s Museo Reina Sofía into a cinema. The commitment to sustainable construction is evident in many of the projects, for instance, through natural ventilation and the use of wood and other bio-based materials.
