With Nokia’s business growing vigorously, expansion of the head office building became a necessity. 16,500 m2 of new floor space was required, for about 700 new employees. This meant that the existing space had to be increased by 50%.
View
from Keilalahti.
Three alternatives were prepared, with respect to functional and architectural features, and of these, the Company management chose a combination of the taller, curved building and the lower, rectangular building. These are joined together by a semi-cylindrical atrium that contains canteen facilities, conference rooms and assembly rooms. At ground level, the atrium is surrounded by reception functions, the health centre, the Brand Room (VIP exhibition facility), an auditorium, a conference room and the kitchen. The first floor is reserved for meeting rooms and a temporary office unit (for e.g. visitors and Company employees who normally work somewhere else). From the second floor up, the floors contain office facilities of Nokia Mobile Phones. These facilities were designed as flexible and modifiable as possible.
Light
and steel structures create the image for internal courtyard.
The executive team of Nokia determined a very clear framework for the planning of the building: despite the different geometry, it has to be identifiable as part of the existing building. The choice of materials was for this reason based on the existing materials: a concrete frame complemented by exact steel profiles and glass, an abundance of warm-coloured wood on floor, ceiling and wall surfaces and stiffening concrete walls with a trowel paint finish. The cladding of the semi-cylindrical atrium consists of a truncated cone, which was the most economical solution from the point of view of the structures and space utilisation, but the details of which required an exceptionally high work load both on the drawing board and on the building site.
Curved
mass of the expansion ends the office center.
Energy savings and sustainability were dominant factors in planning. The first double façade in Scandinavia was built on the Nokia Building in 1995, with computer controlled valves and shutters in the intermediate space generating energy savings. With no previous models functioning on the same technical principles, the façade was planned in collaboration between the designers and the building owner. The energy management solutions chosen for the expansion were based on the experience gained from the first building stage.
In connection with the second building stage, the access passages within the office block have been improved by means of access bridges between the first and the second building stage and between the office block and the parking garage as well as an access bridge running over the restaurant in the first building stage.
Lobby
and the reception desk.
The access bridges are built on five 45-meter long lattice beams, which are supported to each other and bear the plane frameworks of the bottom and top level over a span of 30 meters. The two 800 m2 glass walls of the glass envelope and the 100 m2 glass roofing laid at an inclination of 1:50 are supported on this frame.
The 80-meter access bridge from the parking garage consists of 20-meter long blocks supported onto 5-meter tall columns, with curved wires stressed between the vertical columns. The same structural principle has been used for the 30-meter long access bridge, supported at both ends, that runs through the internal courtyard of the first building stage.
The glass roofing of the atrium is an inverted semi cone in shape. The glass roof consists of triangular units, with the main bearers supported by a structure consisting of four compression rods and three tension rods. The roof span is 21 m. The second attic floor that serves as a connecting space for technical systems between the building masses cuts the glass roof. The access bridges running through the atrium are suspended from robust steel trusses recessed in the walls of the attic floor. The steel-framed, glazed spiral staircase and the steel-framed panorama lifts, on the other hand, are supported on these access bridges. In the glazed structures, hot rolled open profiles are used as frames for the aluminium 0-profile.
Vertical
connections with their access bridges divide the high space into two sections.
Similar to the first building stage, the frame structures of the double façade are so-called acid-resistant stainless steel EN 1.4401 (AISI 316). The internal glass wall surfaces of the atrium are built on a 20 x 80 tubular profile frame and the UNP 240 profile steel is used on the face of the concrete slabs. Also, there is a 230 m2 glass roof, built on a steel frame, on the roof terrace of the lower building mass. The material properties of steel have been emphasised by using mainly hot rolled INP and UNP open profiles, and by painting the steel parts in the slightly silvery tone RAL 9007.
Expansion completed in April 2001.
Floor area according to building right: 16 500 m2
Total area: 23 500 m2
Volume: 110 000 m3
Photographs: Jussi Tiainen