Ligereza

Eco-Viikki

Aims, Implementation and Results

“A bit too child-oriented... but still quite OK.”
“This is really a wonderful home for someone
such as me.”
“A nice place, badly built”

City of Helsinki
Ministry of the Environment

ISBN 952-473-455-9

Eco-Viikki
Aims, Implementation and Results

CITY OF HELSINKI
MINISTRY OF THE ENVIRONMENT

Text and editorial group
HarriHakaste Ministry of the Environment
Riitta Jalkanen Helsinki City Planning Department
Aila Korpivaara Ministry of the Environment
Heikki Rinne City of Helsinki Economic and Planning Centre
Markku Siiskonen Helsinki City Planning Department
Translation from Finnish Gekko Design
(Kristina Kölhi and Gareth Griffiths)
Layout Gekko Design (Kristina Kölhi)
Viikki resident interviews Sanna AhonenISBN 952-473-455-9
Printed by Dark Oy, Vantaa, 2005

Foreword

Eco-Viikki – Aims, Implementation and Results tells about the first ecological housing area
to be built in Finland. Eco-Viikki is a housing area but also a noteworthy and internationally renowned experimental project.
More specifically, this book presents the aims, planning process, and practical implementation of Eco-Viikki, aswell as the use of the buildings over a period of a few years. Also
documented are the multi-faceted cooperation between the different parties, the ambitious goals, the unique eco-criteria, the numerous individual development projects, the
tools of building project steerage as well as the long-term monitoring of the use of the
buildings.
As a residential area and forum for practical building,Viikki has offered the opportunity
to implement applied research and development as well as to test ecological solutions
immediately in the field. It is important to discuss and learn from the ten-year long development project and its results and to take up the best applications into general building
practice.
Eco-Viikki is the internationally best-known Finnish housing project from the turn ofthe
millennium. Eco-Viikki and the development work being carried out with other ecologically-sustainable building projects have also encouraged Finnish researchers, planners, local
and state authorities as well as other actors within the building and real-estate sector to
become active in international cooperation.
The editors

Contents

FOREWORD 2

1

AIMS AND IMPLEMENTATION 4SITES AND DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS 20

3

Housing Diversity
Ecological themes in housing
Ecological aims in the Viikki public services
Ecological municipal engineering and park construction
Ecological building projects elsewhere in Viikki

RESULTS 32
The built environment
The green environment
Natural resources
Emissions
The social environment

THE FUTURE? 44
APPENDIX:

4

Actors,events and facts

48

2

Aims and
implementation

1

“In an ecological society the material cycle is made
as enclosed and nature-preserving as possible. Energy can be obtained, for instance, from solar or
wind energy and other renewable sources. The need
for vehicles is minimised and new forms of transport
are developed. The optimal size for a functioning
community is about 1500inhabitants. Widely-placed
buildings are located near cultivated land and nature corridors. People who work from their own
home live in the area. Goods, food and services are
produced locally and the need for commuting has
been minimized. Modern technology is used in energy production as well as in moving information and
materials.”
Eero Paloheimo’s criteria for an ecological society,presented at
the Eco-Community Project meeting, 1.2.1994.

4

The environmental boom takes
hold in the building and property sector
The general awareness of ecological problems increased in
Finland at the beginning of the 1990s. In 1987 the Brundtland
Commission defined the concept of “sustainable development” and ecological sustainability became an important goal
also in land use planning...