Sito involved in design and planning of Kalasatama centre in Helsinki
Kalasatama area is the most important target of city centre construction in Helsinki in the coming years. The size of the area is over 170,000 floor square metres which is twice the size Kamppi centre (openeded in 2006) in downtown Helsinki.
Aerial view from the north, photo: Helin&Co Architects
The City of Helsinki organized a contest for the implementation of the Kalasatama centre in 2009. The contest, which took the form of a negotiating procurement, lasted from the autumn of 2009 to March 2011. In its meeting on the 11th of May, the Helsinki City Board picked SRV Group as the winner of the Kalasatama centre contest.
SRV chose Sito as its partner for infrastructure planning during the contest phase, and Sito will continue infrastructure planning during the implementation phase, which started immediately after the contest was decided. The planning and implementation of the Kalasatama center is an extremely challenging task, since both a metroline and the Itäväylä highway bisect the Kalasatama centre. Traffic on the Itäväylä or metroline will not be cut for long periods because of construction. Building site arrangements will be used to ensure continuation of traffic.
Five floors of commercial building and parking space will be excavated in the Kalasatama centre, below the lanes of traffic. The planning and building of 20 - 33 floor tower blocks reaching up to more than 120 metres will require extraordinary solutions. In addition, the Itäväylä will have to be diverted for approximately three years. The diversion will require, among other things, construction of a 120 metre temporary bridge. Three access tunnels connecting the parking facilities under the centre to the surrounding street network will be built. Integration of the access tunnels and street engineering is a challenging design and construction task.
Construction of the Kalasatama centre started with preliminary construction work in August 2011.
Responsible for the infrastructure planning of the Kalasatama centre in Sito are:
- Project manager and street and municipal engineering Paavo Åvist.
- Traffic planning Seppo Karppinen
- Geotechnical planning Olli Niemi
- Bridge and structural planning Jussi Luokkakallio
- Rock construction planning Jannis Mikkola
- In addition, a large number of special experts will participate in the project
