I’m currently on Suomenlinna Island, which is a 10 minute ferry ride from downtown
Helsinki. Suomenlinna was an active military fortress from approximately 1750 to 1948, and today it functions mostly as a tourist attraction. A few people live on it full-time, but most of the people seen strolling Suomenlinna appear to be tourists, or young Finnish families looking for a little diversion.
Suomenlinna was first called Sveaborg (“Swedish Fortress”) and was built under an order from Swedish King Fredrik I. Sveaborg was referred to as Viapori by the Finns. Sveaborg/Viapori only faced direct military action twice. It suffered a surrender to Russian forces in 1808, and was bombed heavily by the French and English during the Crimean War. Sveaborg was renamed Suomenlinna (“Finnish Fortress”) after Finland’s independence was achieved in 1917. In 1991, UNESCO named Suomenlinna a World Heritage Site.
I’m here as part of the latest deployment of the Makrolab. We’re currently setting up a base of operations on Suomenlinna using the new MAKROLAB-RDU (rapid deployment unit), an instant architecture rapid deployment building. There are full details of what we will be doing as part of this workshop on the locative.net website.
Some wonderful people are here: Marc Tuters, Christian Nold, Jo Walsh, and others, not to mention our indefatigable host, Marko Peljhan. I’m looking forward to a productive and fun time, and hope to post reports here often.
But for the moment, I’ll share some pictures of the island:
{{popup si.jpg pink buildings 400×300}}For a former military island, there are a surprising number of pink buildings
{{popup si2.jpg sea 300×400}}A view from the dock with threatening clouds
{{popup si3.jpg bridge 400×300}}A bridge connecting two parts of Suomenlinna