The project is composed of an electricity substation building and five designer powerline structures, set in the national landscape of Imatrankoski rapids in Eastern Finland. Balance with the surrounding landscape has been the foremost goal of the design. The substation is a plain concrete structure clad over with a double-skin of hand-made long bricks laid in a zig-zag profile. The triangular motif of the brick cladding is repeated in the steel profiles of the new powerline structures. The design breaks apart aspects of the built context and reassembles them in a new abstracted form.

Tuomas Kivinen is an architect and a partner at Virkkunen & Co Architects, a Helsinki-based office focusing on the industrial sector. He is the lead architect and principal designer of major projects at the firm. Kivinen’s goal is to design architecture that is appropriate for its location and based on a broad examination of the context and landscape. His design of Kalasatama Electricity Substation in Helsinki was awarded the Finnish Metal Facade of the Year 2019 prize.

A Helsinki-based architecture office with over 60 years of experience. The company is focused on the industrial sector with an emphasis on designing and planning energy infrastructure. Recent work is characterized by the demands set on the design quality of the new infrastructure of an increasingly urbanizing world.