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Scenes and scents of urban nature

Aesthetics researcher Petteri Kummala appreciates the rough beauty of cities.

Urban nature is something of a blind spot in aesthetics research. “Nature rose to the centre of research in aesthetics in the late 1960s – at the same time as the environmental movement gained a foothold in Western countries,” explains researcher Petteri Kummala.

“To the environmental movement, the city was the antithesis of nature, and urban nature remained a gray area even as an aesthetic phenomenon. The focus was on the beauty of unspoiled nature.”

Kummala is preparing his doctoral thesis at the University of Helsinki. He examines urban nature as an aesthetic phenomenon, using the Töölönlahti bay as an example. The city centre of Helsinki is bordered by this body of water to the north.

According to Kummala, urban nature is hybrid: not exactly wilderness, but seldom completely under human control. The flower gardens surrounding the Finlandia House – which was designed by Alvar Aalto, Finland’s national architect – are strongly defined by human action, whereas part of the southern shore of the Töölönlahti bay is overgrown wasteland.

Kummala often carries out his research on the rocks of the northern shore, sitting in the summer café in one of the villas of the Linnunlaulu (“Birdsong”) area, writing down his observations or saving them on the memory card of his digital camera.

“The high hill slows your walking pace near the old wooden villas in Linnunlaulu, and you instinctively look up, toward the villas. The highest point offers an incredible view over the Töölönlahti bay. This is something that has not been planned but that works extremely well.”

“Planners have a twofold job: they should have the courage to create strongly artifactual nature, but they should also know when it’s best not to plan.”

Compared to many other European cities, Helsinki has plenty of urban nature. “Helsinki’s central park, Keskuspuisto, represents the type of wild nature that is virtually nonexistent, for example, in the British Isles, where people consider nature to be something you find in the countryside.”

Although Helsinki is young even for a Finnish town, Kummala says its layers are clearly visible. The different parts of Helsinki have strong and distinct characteristics.

Petteri Kummala’s five favourite places in Helsinki

“You can sense the four seasons strongly here: the scent of freshly cut grass in the summer, the smell of rotting leaves and soil in the autumn. In the winter, you can walk on the frozen sea.”

“If Helsinki is the Daughter of the Baltic Sea, then the old harbour railway passage is a scar on her cheek: a peculiar place where vagrants sleep in their makeshift cardboard shelters. When the railway passage is renovated into the Baana pedestrian and bicycle route, I fear that the graffiti, tags and other pieces of decadent history will be cleaned and polished away. Fortunately, at least the under-bridge areas will remain rough and robust.”

“The square part of the building, which was designed by Carl Ludvig Engel, has the air of a sacred space. This sense of elevation suits a library well. The Rotunda, which was designed by Gustaf Nyström, is an elegant addition to Engel’s work.”

“The cafeteria was built on a hill, in a little pocket inside the block. Only the National Archives personnel seem to be aware of this cafeteria, which offers an enjoyable environmental experience.”

“My master’s thesis dealt with Finnish architecture around the turn of the millennium. The epilogue of my thesis discussed Kiasma, which is an example of just the opposite – an entirely different building. Kiasma was designed by the American architect Steven Holl. The Sanoma House, a representative example of Finnish architecture in the 2000s, is located right next to Kiasma.”

Text: Antti Kivimäki
Photo: Veikko Somerpuro

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