HoPE in the local news!
The Finnish newspaper Vasabladet wrote an article on the HoPE-project receiving Kone-funding. The text is in Swedish and at the moment...
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Housing, Prefabrication and Export
the architecture of reconstruction in times of crises
Welcome to the HoPe project website. We are a group of researchers passionate about prefabricated architecture, and its role in the time of crisis, in particular about local identity and community building as well as the aftermath of trauma. Here we will write about different discoveries and case studies from around the globe - our findings, interviews, and photo reports from our field works.
We hope that it will be the platform for experiences exchange and networking.
THE PROJECT
The HoPE-project examines the role of exported houses learning from the experiences of the Finnish company Puutalo oy’s housing export to Poland and Israel between 1940 and 1980, developing data for future crisis reconstruction based on the historical information. Puutalo oy traded mainly with crisis-stricken areas providing aid for communities facing reconstruction on a massive scale. As a result, hundreds of thousands of houses made according to Finnish modernist architectural ideals contributed to both temporarily and permanently changing and defining new landscapes globally, whilst providing shelter for the inhabitants in post-trauma communities.
How the prefabricated wooden houses functioned as a means to process crises, as war and natural disasters, both in the exporting and the receiving countries, as well as for the inhabitants and local communities?
How were the houses received and adapted in the case countries and what can we learn from history that can be of use in today’s crisis reconstruction?
Mia Åkerfelt,
University teacher in art history
Åbo Akademi University, Finalnd
Mia focuses on the connection between architecture, ideology and minority identity as well as applied a historiographic perspective to the Finnish architectural discussion.
Tzafrir Fainholtz
Architect and architectural historian
Adjunct Lecturer in the faculty of architecture and town planning
Technion IIT, Israel
Tzafrir is studying the dissemination of architectural knowledge, political and social aspects of architecture and town planning; History of modern architecture; The historiography of architecture; Cultural diversity and the conservation of cultural heritage.
Anna Wilczynska
Landscape architect, researcher,
university teacher
Eesti Maaülikool and WULS-SGGW
Estonia and Poland
Anna's biggest interest is the connection between landscape and culture, urban landscape, bottom-up city-making, public participatory design and PPGIS methods, urban nature. Anna was actively involved in the development of the Osiedle Jazdów - Finnish prefabricated architecture settlement in Warsaw
Martti Veldi
Researcher,
university teacher
Eesti Maaülikool
Estonian National Heritage Board
Martti is interested in landscape and settlement archaeology, GIS, historical mapping, biographical approach to landscape studies, long-term landscape change.
ABOUT US
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