Metsä Wood HeadquartersRealized

Metsätapiola office building accommodates head offices of two companies: Metsa Group and Farmers’ Social Insurance Institution MELA. A renovation of the complex, covering the design and completion of a new office building as well as the renovation of the highest, eight-storey volume, especially as regards its facades and ground-floor spaces was first completed in 2013. The lower volumes were demolished and their part of the site was parcelled out for residential construction.

The Tapiola area is marked by a humane dialogue between architecture and nature. It is characterized by its surrounding forests, seascape and concrete buildings. As an abstract metaphor of a birch forest, the facades of the new building were articulated by vertical sections bent in varying angles. This produces many variations in the interiors, spatial rhythms and views opening towards the sea.

The new and old office spaces are connected by a one-storey-high restaurant-cum-function room, whose architecture is based on the top products of Metsäliitto’s own industrial businesses. The aim of the design as a pilot project was a new and innovative solution for purposes, where sustainability and functional flexibility combined with high-class aesthetic experience is needed. The core is an integrated construction, where new design creates added value to existing practice and products. The development of the main expressive supports required consideration of many options and cost analyses, as well as digital visual, structural and analogue modelling. The columns are milled from Kerto-wood, double beams are bent glulam. These are covered with prefab wooden panels with insulation. Skylights open between the trestles.

For the interior spaces, development of the expressive main supports required consideration of many options and cost analyses, as well as visual, structural and analogue modelling. There was intensive and interesting cooperation between the architect and the production organization’s structural designer.

Clerical work mainly takes place in open areas. Along with them, the needs of a modern, fluctuating work community are addressed by teamwork rooms, meeting rooms and rendezvous points. Daylight as an energy saving factor was given special attention. The open areas were grouped to face the sea, while the separate rooms were located to the courtyard side. Wood is an essential material in the office areas and meeting rooms as well as the exposed parts of furnishings.

When the building was already in use, it appeared that there was a need for an auditorium bigger than the original one. Because of the extremely small plot, the options were limited. After considering numerous alternatives, a floor sloping to a wide fan design was chosen and the new auditorium was completed in 2016. The goal for the interior space was spacious, dynamic architecture which was achieved in the small construction space by tilting the exterior walls so that the space widens upwards. The structures are mainly wood. The roof consists of stressed skin panels supported by one glulam principal beam and exterior walls. The wooden battening of the exterior cladding joins the facade to the function room of the main building that was completed earlier.