Functional and community-friendly urban housing

29.10.2020

The 16-storey Jätkäsaari Pollari, which was completed in autumn 2020 as Jätkäsaari’s tallest residential building, stands out as a landmark in the skyline of Helsinki’s city center. Its community-friendly solutions and resident-friendly design had features that posed some challenges to implementation.

When the old cargo-port area of Jätkäsaari was built as an extension of downtown Helsinki and a functional residential area, a customer-oriented approach has been emphasized in the area’s projects right from the planning table.

Jätkäsaari’s Pollari is the first building site of three triangular “Kolmiokortteli” blocks for its developer Hartela. The block is expected to be completed in 2021. The first completed Pollari has owner-occupied apartments ranging from studios to 4-5-room apartments, and most of them are corner apartments with balconies. Pollari stands out for its height but also architecturally, with its fan-shaped balconies.

In Pollari, residents have also been involved in the planning. Residents were able to choose the interior style and surface materials for the common room. Residents also have access to a common guest room in the building.

Hartela’s Mikko Merve was the responsible site manager of Pollari’s construction site, who says that in Pollari, daily life has been facilitated by placing storage spaces for movables on the floors where the residences are located. At the same time, however, the solution increased the fire load and had to be considered separately in the design.

Just the right product for the job was found at ETS NORD. – SEDM-L is a CE-marked multi-leaf multi-compartment smoke extraction damper that is very well suited to situations where the smoke extraction damper is required to have the smallest possible depth. Such locations are, for example, residential apartment buildings such as Pollari, where smoke extraction is carried out directly from the corridor to the smoke extraction shaft. Thanks to the high fire classification and modular installation of the smoke extraction damper, it is also perfectly suited to more challenging conditions, ETS NORD Product Manager Oskari Mattila says.

– Despite the update of the plans, we were able to solve the challenges ahead in good cooperation with ETS NORD, many thanks to them for that, says Mikko Merve of Hartela.

– I myself had no previous experience with ETS NORD products, but there is a great deal of trust in them on the construction site and the products are considered to be of high quality. With the experience of this project, I can warmly recommend cooperation with ETS NORD, Merve states.