Esa Ruskeepää Architects

Bildungshaus is a public library and education center for the city of Wolfsburg, Germany. The site is located near Klieversberg Park in the vicinity of the Wolfsburg Cultural Center by Alvar Aalto and Wolfsburg City Theatre by Hans Scharoun.

The building is designed for various types of learning from collaboration and groupwork to focused solitary study. Thematically organized media collections are accompanied by lecture spaces, classrooms, educational kitchens, gyms, ateliers, workshops, and music rehearsal rooms. An efficient circulation system is developed to connect the different programmatic entities.

The design is based on a set of geometric rules in plan and elevation. A dynamic composition emerges from four highly symmetrical volumes and a simple square column grid of 7 x 7 meters. The structural frame is made of cast-on-site concrete. The ceiling grid is made of interlocking hardwood timber beams. The building’s structural and technical concept was developed together with Arup. The design is complemented by an extraordinary plantation concept by Tita Giese.

Opinmäki learning center comprises premises for comprehensive education, early education and care, a public library, and sports and youth services of the city of Espoo, Finland. Situated in the center of the yet unfinished Suurpelto district, Opinmäki lends identity and provides space for the local community. Adult education, sports, and cultural events can take place simultaneously during pre-primary and comprehensive education hours, as well as after school hours.

The daycare center accommodates six groups of children with ages ranging from under one to six years old. The international comprehensive school has approximately 1000 students and consists of nine grades from ages seven to 15. Developed in compliance with the Finnish national curriculum, Opinmäki is designed to prepare the next generation for an open, knowledge-based, and networked society.

The building is composed of nine rectangular volumes that form a compact, organic overall layout. The different parts of the building are optimized for a wide variety of uses. The resultant areas in between the rectangular volumes serve as communal spaces and intuitive entry points from all sides of the building. The largest volumes lend the building a distinct public character while smaller volumes create a playful backdrop for the schoolyard and playground. The primary building material is concrete. The façades are custom-made brick laid on site.

The proposed new art museum is located at the historical town center of Tammisaari, Finland. Established in 1546 by Gustav Vasa of Sweden, Tammisaari is one of the oldest towns in Finland.

The new museum joins an assembly of local art and cultural institutions, many of which are housed in the original residential buildings from the 18th and 19th centuries. Visible from the market square, the new building creates an entry point to the cultural quarter and completes the transformation of a former domestic courtyard into a public domain.

The building is organized into four floors that are identical in plan. The room height and use of daylight differs from floor to floor. Some floors can be divided into a series of small galleries.

The brick walls are laid on site as a single-leaf monolithic structure. The cast-on-site concrete floors can withstand high concentrated loads without the use of columns. Passive measures such as thermal mass and solar orientation help create a self-regulating, robust, and comfortable indoor climate. A hybrid ventilation system supports the use of the building with minimal technical efforts and interventions. The climate and energy concepts were developed in collaboration with Transsolar.

The museum is founded by a renowned Finnish human geneticist and philanthropist Albert de la Chapelle. Its collections include, among others, several paintings by Helene Schjerfbeck.

The proposed new municipal office building for the city of Porvoo, Finland is located at the town center, defined by a rigid Neoclassical grid plan from the early 19th century. The office building is situated by the market square and behind the Porvoo City Hall, a Neo-Renaissance landmark designed by C.R. Rosenberg.

The design balances between creating a freestanding landmark as a contemporary counterpart to the old city hall on one hand and continuing the regular urban structure on the other, marking a transition from monumental architecture to rigid urban structure.

The new building is composed of four identical volumes each approximately the size of the old city hall. Touching the street lines in four corners only, the slender volumes create a series of intimate outdoor spaces that mark the entrances to the new building.

Campus Hellwinkel in Wolfsburg, Germany, consists of a primary school built in the 1950’s, a daycare center and a planned student cafeteria. The daycare center, scheduled for completion in 2020, accommodates six groups of children, with ages ranging from under one to six years old.

The load-bearing structure of the daycare center is made of sand-lime brick walls and precast concrete slabs. The façades are affordable standard brick laid on site in a precise pattern. The reddish-brown color of the brick is complemented by mortar joints and aluminium windows in similar tones. The interior walls are rendered with lime plaster. The building utilizes both natural and mechanical ventilation. No synthetic materials have been used in construction. The landscape design is by Vogt.

The proposed new campus for the Bern University of Applied Sciences and Bern University of the Arts is located at Weyermannshaus-Ost, a former industrial site in the center of the city of Bern, Switzerland.

The campus will accommodate 4600 students and 1300 employees from the departments of business, health care and social work of the Bern University of Applied Sciences and departments of music, opera and theater of the Bern University of the Arts. Educational and cultural programs, including multiple performance venues, will be made available for a wide audience outside the academic community. The presence of regional companies, startups, and art institutions will strengthen the campus’s role as a vessel of cultural and scientific exchange.

The architecture is based on a highly adaptable modular framework made exclusively of exposed structural timber and concrete. A column grid of 7.5 x 10 meters strikes a balance between material efficiency and flexibility. The façade and technical installations are completely separate from the structural frame. The structural timber concept was developed in collaboration with Swiss engineer Josef Kolb. The landscape design is by Maurus Schifferli.

The proposed new building for the Aalto University’s School of Arts, Design and Architecture is a central element of an extensive urban renewal project of Otaniemi campus in Espoo, Finland. The masterplan for the campus and the iconic main building for the Helsinki University of Technology was designed by Alvar Aalto in the 1950’s and 1960’s.

Aalto University was established in 2010 as a merger of three major Finnish universities: Helsinki University of Technology, Helsinki School of Economics, and University of Art and Design Helsinki. The emergence of new interdisciplinary programs and projects at Aalto University require radical programmatic flexibility and openness.

A generous square grid of cast-on-site concrete columns and flat slabs is developed to provide the necessary versatility. The building can be continuously reprogrammed simply by manipulating the boundaries between the departments while preserving the characteristics of each discipline’s core. Endless in principle, the grid is interrupted by arbitrary decisions that lend the building its final form: platonic matter shaped by subjective evaluation and contextual constraints.

A series courtyards and gardens, accessed from a sheltered perimeter on the ground floor, create memorable entry points for the new school. The enclosed, intensively urban outdoor spaces stand in contrast to the surrounding modernist greenfield campus.

Mafoombey is a portable, recyclable space for experiencing sound and music. It is made entirely of corrugated cardboard. The design combines sophisticated digital fabrication and primitive, stacked assembly. The exposed edges of corrugated cardboard create a semi-open structure that provides a unique acoustic ambience.

The cardboard sheets measuring 1.25 x 2.5 meters are cut by a computer numerical control prototyping robot (CNC). No glue is used in the construction – the structure is held together by its own weight. Mafoombey can be assembled and disassembled within a single day. Stacked on pallets, the sheets fit in a regular sized truck for transportation.