Keskustakirjasto 2017

The City of Helsinki is holding an open international architectural competition titled “The Heart of the Metropolis” for the new Central Library. The first phase of the competition ends on 16 April. The competition entries will be exhibited at the Jätkäsaari Bunker between 10 and 16 May. The exhibition will be open on weekdays between 11 am and 7 pm and on weekends between 12 noon and 6 pm. Visitors will have the opportunity to comment on the competition entries. Read more »

How does a library turn out when it has been constructed from a child’s perspective and in the scale of a child? How to make the library a fun place for kids? The answer to this was traced in the children’s workshop organised in Annantalo on 4 February as part of the Design Capital Weekend. Under the guidance of two architects, Tuomas Toivonen and Maria Isotupa, children designed a place for themselves at the Central Library in the heart of Helsinki. Read more »

The literary panel discussion during the Helsinki Pride week featured a group of authors talking about how to describe homosexual love and relationships that break traditional norms. In their works, writers Jukka O. Miettinen, Johanna Sinisalo and Helena Sinervo have described the rainbow people. The Central Library also stands free of discrimination as a place where diversity is seen as richness. At the Central Library, love overcomes prejudice! 

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Rum för Barn is a children’s library in Kulturhuset, Stockholm. But it is also an expedition, discovery and mystery. “Emma thought it was really exiting!” the mother of a little girl writes in her blog Där mitt hjärta bor after their visit on Tuesday in Rum för Barn. It is must be true as this “Mother Svea’s children’s room” includes all characteristics of a circus: curiosity, bold experiments, acrobatics, laughter from surprise as well as a feeling that something magical has just passed by and touched us. Read more »

The Fox Den Library is an imaginary future library. The Fox Den is known in the entire city for its friendly service, and its personnel is asked to help in solving many kinds of problems. Tubs of recommendation materials, barrels of digital data, yards of travelling exhibitions, pounds of reading, and dozens of events – that’s what libraries are made of. Many things happen in the library during the day, too much for one person to handle. Therefore, there is a clear distribution of work in the library.

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At the end of the decade, people’s working environments in cities will change to a significant extent. While most of the work today is still done at the primary workplace (office) or at secondary workplaces (for example, partners’, customers’ and subcontractors’ premises), it has been predicted that in 2017 as much as 50% of so-called office work will be done at third workplaces (for example, in hotels, cafés and congress venues).

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In early February, Virgin Airlines published various funny questions asked by travellers during flights, noted down by the flight crew. The passengers’ queries included, for example, whether they could open their window, if the crew could turn down the noise from the engine, if the captain could stop the turbulence and if the flight attendant could show the location of the shower in the airplane.

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