Monday, March 3, 2008

Central Railway Station, Helsinki


Helsinki Railway Station by Eliel SaarinenHelsinki Railway Station is where I get myself into trouble. Many people will argue that it is not an Art Deco building. I have seen it described as late Finnish Art Nouveau. I don't really care, I think it has some deco elements but what is more important, I like it.

Eliel Saarinen won the competition to design a new railway station for Helsinki in 1904 and over the following ten years the pink granite building was completed. The entrance to the station is placed in a huge arch-shaped wall supported but two rectangular columns. Several stepped arches are laid into the brickwork culminating in a large grid-patterened window above the canopy of the doors. A clock is centred in this window. The arch itself is topped with a copper apron turned green with exposure to the elements.

Statues outside Helsinki Railway Station by Emil WikstromFlanking the doors four statues of mythical giants or gods holding spherical lamps stand welcoming travellers into the station. The figures were designed by Emil Wikstrom and offer a very creative way to incorporate lights onto the front of a building. My picture shows two of the statues with snow on their heads and shoulders.

The whole building is crowned by a copper-topped clock tower. The copper work is a collection of simple geometric shapes including several series of stepped rectangles and domed pineapple shapes. (Do you like my technical architectural language?) Clock Tower, Helsinki Railway StationAbove each clock face is a piece of decoration which reminds me of the winged-sundisk motifs of Ancient Egypt which became popular with later architects, especially after the discovery of Tukanhamen's tomb by Howard Carter in 1922.

Is the Helsinki Railway Station Art Deco? The short answer is probably 'No', mostly because of the time it was designed and built. I think it does, however, show the development from the organic architecture of Art Nouveau to the more geometric architecture of Art Deco as part of a gradual process over many years incorporating many influences. All art movements take time to evolve there is rarely a big bang which creates a new movement. There is always something that has gone before that has inspired others one way or the other.


8 comments:

  1. i thought you wrote a good piece but i almost didnt read it because you wrote "i seen" in your first paragraph. i saw, or i have seen. sorry but it made me doubt your writing

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  2. Thanks Anon. It is difficult to self-edit work and errors will get through. I fixed it up. Please let me know if you find any other mistakes.

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  3. I'd say it's the prototype or trendsetter for many Art Deco buildings. Just see the Art Deco article in Wikipedia and you'll say what I mean.

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  4. I agree completely Sakari. Thanks for reading and commenting.

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  5. Also Saarinen's project of Chicago Tribune Tower made in 1922 became a prototype for american art-deco skyscrapers

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  6. Thanks Ruyter. He was ahead of his time and in many ways a leader for the architectural field.

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  7. Hi David. I'm a writer from Malaysia and currently browsing through some info from the net on Art Deco building, until I stumbled upon your blog. The building i'm working on is an Art Deco mosque in Malaysia. I bet it is most probably, the only Art Deco mosque in the world. And i believe you should have a look into it and feature it on your blog. The mosque name is Sultan Sulaiman Royal Mosque located in Klang, Malaysia. Here's a wiki page of the mosque: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultan_Sulaiman_Mosque.
    Keep up the good work!

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  8. Thanks for dropping by Hazique. The Sultan Sulaiman Royal Mosque is certainly a great looking building and you could be right in saying it is the only Art Deco mosque in the world. To my eyes a lot of the traditional Islamic decoration of interlocking geometric patterns lends itself very readily to the Deco style. Maybe I'll get to Klang once day and get to see it for myself.

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