Helsinki: waterworks, a rock church and Olympic tower

The City of Helsinki’s district overview places Helsinki’s settlement at the mouth of the Vantaa river in 1550 and its move to the Vironniemi peninsula in 1640. Its 2004 district overview mentions archaeological finds from that settlement. It also describes waterworks production buildings in Vanhakaupunki, including those that house the Finnish Museum of Technology (Tekniikan museo). The museum says its Filtering Hall was built in 1909 for the pumps, the main electric switchboard and the filtration pools that delivered clean drinking water. According to the museum’s Finnish page, the hall is in a protected building and its restored sand filters remain in place; its English page describes interiors restored to the way they looked in the 1930s.[1][2][3]

Temppeliaukio Church in the Töölö district was designed by the brothers Timo and Tuomo Suomalainen, who won a third architectural competition in 1961 with an entry called “Kivikirkko” (Stone Church); it was completed in 1969. Finnish Architecture (Archinfo) says the church was set within the rock to preserve the hillock’s natural form, with parish rooms arranged along its edge. Docomomo Finland describes rough bedrock walls and a shallow roof with copper thread on its underside, carried by radial concrete beams. A floor drainage system channels seepage from fissures in the rock. At the altar, a natural ice-age split remains visible as part of the focal wall. According to Archinfo, the church gained protected-building status in 2004.[4][5]

Finnish Architecture dates Helsinki’s open stadium-design competition to 1933 and identifies Toivo Jäntti and Yrjö Lindegren as the winners. The same page dates the first design stage to 1938; the Stadium Foundation gives 12 June 1938 as the inauguration date. Both sources give the tower’s height as 72 m. The Stadium Foundation says the tower was once called the Marathon Tower, because a runner’s first glimpse of it was said to mark the start of the final stretch. Hannes Kolehmainen lit the Olympic fire at its top on 19 July 1952, and Finland’s broadcaster Yle used the tower’s microwave link for its first television tests on 15 March 1957. The Foundation relays the constructors’ estimate that the tower could flex by 0.5–0.8 cm in heavy wind.[6][7][8]