THE DISSOLVING CORPORATION Contemporary Architecture and Corporate Identity in Finland Peter MacKeith www.eva.fi EVA´s homepage contains reports, articles and other material in Finnish and in English. Publisher: Taloustieto Oy Cover: Antti Eklund Printing: Yliopistopaino 2005 ISBN 951-628-424-8 PREFACE In the past few years, the Finnish Business and Policy Forum EVA has treated the issues of creativity and business-culture interaction with growing interest. This report is an extension of the June, 2004 EVA conference on “Creativity through Competitiveness” and is published in co-operation with the Creative Finland Association. Entertaining a subject quite different from past EVA report themes, this essay offers one perspective on the state of Finnish corporate architecture within the more general context of corporate management practices and ar- chitectural innovations. In this report, Professor Peter MacKeith argues that in the contempora- ry moment of global, open-market economies, Finnish architecture is at a critical juncture. This condition is reflected precisely in recent headquarters architecture produced by Finnish corporations. Whereas a hundred years ago corporate headquarters were central elements of the surrounding cultural and urban environment, expressing values of the emerging national consciousness, today’s Finnish corporate headquar- ters have adopted a style of neutrality and anonymity, and situated themselves outside of the public realm. Professor MacKeith calls for a corporate architecture that takes into account issues of sustainable de- velopment and the corporation’s relationship to the society, culture and civic realm in which it is physically situated. Along with the desired image and values communicated by a building’s form to the outside world, corporate office planning has also adopted new objectives. The author strongly questions whether open-plan, glass-walled working environments truly result in increased creativity, positive encounters and productivity – or whether this is simply a case of parallel rhetoric in management and architectural ambitions. Nevertheless, Professor MacKeith is hopeful: he believes that thanks to its highly educated, design- and environment-conscious society, Fin- land possesses the means to demonstrate the benefits of “a design cul- ture”. Superseding the structures and values of the information society, such a culture has great potential for being the pioneer of original as well as culturally and environmentally sustainable corporate architectu- re. We sincerely hope that this report will provide interesting reading for amateurs of architecture, and offer new perspectives to experts as well. We shall emphasize that the views expressed are the author’s. We also wish to give our warmest thanks to all those that assisted in the process of creating this report, as well as the project’s coordinator Kati Heikin- heimo. Helsinki on August 3, 2005 Risto E.J. Penttilä Krister Ahlström Director Chairman of the Board EVA Creative Finland Association Pentti Vartia Managing Director EVA ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This project was initiated on the basis of conversations on architecture, economics and culture in Finland over the last ten years with Dr. Risto E.J. Penttilä, the Director of EVA. I am grateful to Dr. Penttilä and to EVA for the opportunity to work as an EVA Research Fellow, outside of the conventional boundaries of architectural criticism and in the in- terest of a broader audience. Dr. Penttilä has been both a steadfast sup- porter and provocative interlocutor throughout the process. I am furt- her grateful to Creative Finland Association for their support of this publication. Within EVA, the project has been energetically guided and facilitated by Kati Heikinheimo; the essay in particular owes much to her thoughtful editing. The essay is an expanded version of a lecture entit- led “Architecture, Incorporated”, originally given as part of EVA’s June, 2004 symposium on “Creativity through Competitiveness.” In Helsinki, I have benefited from discussions with Jaakko Tapaninen, Juha-Pekka Raeste, Trevor Harris, Mikko Heikkinen, Kimmo Friman, Juha Ilonen, Jouni Kaipia, and Juhani Pallasmaa. Petteri Kummanen of the Museum of Finnish Architecture assisted with image research. The School of Architecture at Washington University in St. Louis (USA) has also provided crucial support. Dean Cynthia Weese, in parti- cular, provided both faculty leave-time and development funds, as well as moral support. Faculty members Zeuler Lima, Eric Mumford, and Elysse Newman contributed key commentary and editorial advice. Graduate research assistants Greg Murphy, Elizabeth Demler, Brian Newman, Beth Priest, and Aaron Robin worked tirelessly to develop information sources and images. My thanks to all. St. Louis, Missouri, USA and Helsinki, Finland August 3, 2005 Peter MacKeith Associate Dean and Associate Professor School of Architecture Washington University in St. Louis CONTENT PREFACE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 1 PRECIS 9 2 PRELUDE: QUANTITIES AND QUALITIES 15 2.1 Competitive, Transparent, Creative 15 2.2 The Projection of Value 17 3 PARABLE – FROM GRANITE TO GLASS 19 3.1 Elisa’s Journey 19 3.2 City of Stone, City of Glass 21 3.3 Two Corporate Faces 25 4 POLITICAL ECONOMY, INCORPORATED 27 4.1 A Restless Economy 27 4.2 The Corporate Mantra: Creativity, Innovation, Flexibility 30 4.3 Less Is Less 36 4.4 The Corporate Architectural Equations 42 5 DISSOLUTIONS: THE DISSOLVING CORPORATION, THE DISSOLVING CITY 44 5.1 A Corporate Survey: Cocoons, Campuses and Glass Boxes 45 5.2 Accelerated Mobility, Building to Sub-let 57 5.3 Architecture’s Loss of Identity 59 6 THE CORPORATE CHALLENGE 62 6.1 The Modern Dynamic 62 6.2 Finnish Opportunities 64 6.3 Conclusion: From Information Society to Design Culture 70 REFERENCES AND ILLUSTRATION CREDITS 73 “There has been a wholesale reinvention of the cultural perception of business and capitalism. Business, particularly business associated with the new technologies, is now seen as the embodiment of modernity.” Will Hutton, Anthony Giddens: “Global Capitalism”1 “The great ‘Modern Project’ is still part of Finland’s cultural heritage [...] In a coun- try where only one building in eight is over sixty years old, Modernism is a tradi- tion.” Riitta Nikula: “Architecture and Landscape: The Building of Finland”2 8 1 PRECIS The turn of the 21st century in Finland has seen the rise of an informa- tion technology fueled domestic economy, one with global reach, as well as the construction of a number of visible corporate headquarters and research and development facilities. At the same time, the recent identification of Finland as a world leader in “creativity”3 links the country’s economic vitality to creative factors of talent, technology and tolerance. This convergence of business, creativity and design at its larg- est scale offers an opportunity to evaluate the image of Finnish business projected by its architecture, and to set that evaluation into the larger context of contemporary practice. Throughout the 20th century, modern architecture and design were closely identified with the cultural identity of Finland. By extension, Finnish business practices often sought to cultivate thoughtful design and well-made architecture, as both an indication of economic vitality HPY Building, Pohjola Insurance Building, Helsinki. Helsinki. 9 and as a representation of corporate values. Lars Sonck’s HPY Building and Gesellius, Lindgren and Saarinen’s Pohjola Insurance Building form century-old reference points in Helsinki’s city center; the SOK coop- erative built a strong identity through modernist buildings in the Enso-Gutzeit Headquarters, SOK, Helsinki. Helsinki. Sanoma House, Helsinki. 10 1930s and 40s; and Alvar Aalto’s Enso-Gutzeit Headquarters is a prom- inent, if still controversial, landmark in Helsinki’s South Harbor. Two re- cent contemporary examples are Pekka Helin’s Nokia House and SARC’s Sanoma House. Expanding upon these local precedents The Dissolving Corporation examines and critiques the most public faces of the corporate world: the architectural designs of corporate headquarters, in Finland and be- yond. The three central messages of this essay are first cautionary, then realis- tic, and finally hopeful: 1) Finnish business development, Finnish design and Finnish crea- tivity are inextricably linked, and must be simultaneously exam- ined, critiqued and enhanced. The concept of “the creative workplace” can be examined effectively in Finland’s smaller-scaled economy, given its highly-educated and highly design-conscious culture. 2) Finland’s development from a closed society to an open market economy is reflected in Finnish architecture and urban design – for better and for worse. One cannot examine the architecture of a cul- ture without examining the economic forces that produce it. 3) Finland possesses the creative means to demonstrate design, ar- chitecture, and urban design that reflects both a political and an eth- Keilaniemi, Espoo. 11 ical economy: a sustainable, urbane, dignified culture of knowledge and design. The initial case study subjects for this inquiry consisted of examples of contemporary corporate headquarters architecture – those of Nokia and Sanoma in Finland; Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Ford and USA Today in the United States; Nike-Europe in the Netherlands; Volkswagen in Germany; and Telenor in Norway. These examples were examined on the basis of both business characteristics (type of product or service, scope of operations, location of facilities, among them)