Designing a locking and door opening solution for the new 1,600-door Helsinki Music Center in Toolonlahti, Helsinki, was no simple task, but Assa Abloy rose to the challenge.
Designing a locking and door opening solution for the new 1,600-door Helsinki Music Center in Toolonlahti, Helsinki, was no simple task, but Assa Abloy rose to the challenge.
A total of 243 designs were submitted for the Helsinki Music Center building, in a competition won by Turku-based architects Laiho-Pulkkinen-Raunio with a proposal titled “A Mezza Voce”. The music center's 38,600 square meters of space are distributed between eight floors – four below ground and four above. It was a very demanding project for all suppliers, including Abloy. Planning the locks was a major undertaking as the building has 1,600 doors – 400 of which are fitted with access control. The doors also come in a wide range of sizes and widths, with the tallest being five meters high.
Construction work began in May 2006 and the music center opened its doors in August 2011. In 2007, when the architects were planning the doors, Marko Pietikainen, Abloy's district manager, began working on the project at architects Laiho-Pulkkinen-Raunio's office in Turku on the southwest coast of Finland. As the planning activities progressed, responsibility for the building's locking and door-opening solutions was transferred to Riitta Nikander-Koivula, an Abloy project sales representative. Design of the locking system was handled by Noora Piironen, an Abloy lock designer, and implemented by Turvaykkoset, an Abloy-authorized locksmith. By all accounts, the level of cooperation between all parties was excellent and great care and skill ensured the success of the project.
“Cooperation between the main contractor, sub-contractors and the architects on all aspects of the locking system contract was very smooth,” says Turvaykkoset's Markus Savolainen. “It was a challenging project completed on a tight schedule.”