WINDOW RESEARCH INSTITUTE

This insurance company building located on a corner lot along Aleksanterinkatu in central Helsinki was designed by the national romanticist architects Eliel Saarinen, Armas Lindgren, and Herman Gesellius. Its doors and windows are adorned with sculptures of spirits and creatures from the Finnish epic poem Kalevala. The base of the building features repeating arched showcase windows made of rough-hewn granite, and the wooden window frames are recessed approximately 50 centimeters, helping to emphasize the façade ornamentation.

Showcase windows of the Pohjola Insurance Building
Herman Gesellius, Armas Lindgren, Eliel Saarinen
Helsinki, 1901

This article is an excerpt from “Windows Stranding the Ethnological and Industrial Networks,” a joint research project concerning windows and the behaviors around them done in collaboration with Tokyo Institute of Technology’s Yoshiharu Tsukamoto Laboratory.