New Standards presents the history and legacy of Puutalo Oy (Timber Houses Ltd.), a Finnish industrial enterprise that was established in 1940 to house war refugees and expanded quickly into a worldwide exporter of prefabricated wooden houses. The exhibition is Finland’s presentation for the 17th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, held from May 22nd to November 21st, 2021. This site presents the exhibition and a possibility to contribute to the Puutalo story.
Women plant potatoes in the Nekala area of the city of Tampere. During the war period every family sought to produce at least a part of their own food through gardens at home. Photo © ELKA
420,000
refugees
During the second world war, Finland faced a daunting refugee crisis when more than 11% of its citizens were forced to flee their homes along the eastern border. In 1940, the urgent need to resettle 420,000 people brought architects and industrialists together to form the pioneering industrial partnership.
The Puutalo consortium was established by 21 Finnish timber companies in order to coordinate the design and production of wooden houses, but it also created a model of manufacturing and construction that helped to modernise Finland’s building industry.
8,800,000 m2
Puutalo means wooden house in Finnish, and timber construction makes good use of the nation’s most abundant natural resource. With forests covering more than 76% of the Finnish land area, Puutalo elements were manufactured in a distributed network of factories around the country and shipped in packages that included everything necessary to assemble the houses. In total, Puutalo produced almost nine million square meters of buildings, around 120,000 houses, over a 15 year period, helping to define a new standard of living in the post-war era. Puutalo houses were designed by some of Finland’s leading mid-century architects, but the modest exterior of these homes belies the sophistication of their manufacturing, assembly and spatial organisation.
Stacks of pre-cut material stand ready and waiting for assembly in northern Colombia. Some 1500 houses were built in the city of Barranquilla from 1955 to 1956 to accommodate working class citizens. These Puutalo homes can still be found throughout the Simón Bolívar neighborhood today. Photo © ELKA
30+ countries
From 1940 to 1955, Puutalo shipped buildings to more than 30 countries around the world, quickly becoming one of Finland’s most widespread architectural exports. The flexibility of the building systems used by the company allowed for significant variations in design, and different models were tailored to a wide range of climates, functions and cultural conditions.
Due to Finland’s geopolitical position, the Soviet Union received the largest amount of Puutalo houses, while substantial numbers went also to Germany, Poland, Israel, Colombia and the UK. The export of wooden houses allowed Finland to import goods such as coal, iron, wool, lard, coffee and tobacco. The exhibition documents this history of production and exchange to reveal the contribution that the company made to Finland’s international reputation for design and manufacturing.
Panels manufactured in Puutalo corporation’s factories are loaded on a ship in the South Harbour of Helsinki in the 1950s. Photo © ELKA
A mother poses with her child in their new home produced by the Puutalo corporation. The interior is typical of middle-class ideals in Finland during the 1940s. Photo © ELKA
80 years
In addition to creating an immersive exhibition experience, the New Standards project aims to research and document the design, development and cultural legacy of Puutalo housing. As part of this effort, a series of case studies show how these modest houses have evolved in response to a variety of climatic and cultural conditions as well as the changing needs of many generations of residents.
Today, after almost 80 years, many of the homes built around the world by Puutalo are still occupied. They continue to represent a model of mass housing that raised living standards through quality design while at the same time leaving space for difference and individual expression.
The New Standards project continues to document existing Puutalo buildings around the world. The façades here are found in Finland, Denmark and Colombia. Photos: Philip Tidwell.
The world of Puutalo
As a global pioneer in the prefabrication of timber structures, the Puutalo corporation spread wood from Finnish forests across the globe in the form of schools, hospitals, dormitories and single-family homes, thousands of which remain in use. Using original company documents from the Central Archives for Finnish Business Records (ELKA) in Finland, the New Standards project is working to locate and document project sites in an online map.
Explore the countries of Puutalo imports by clicking the dots on the map. You are also invited to submit information for existing sites and new locations that have not yet been documented. Welcome to the world of Puutalo!
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Texts © Laura Berger, Philip Tidwell, Kristo Vesikansa
Contemporary photography © Juuso Westerlund
Archival images © Central Archives for Finnish Business Records (ELKA)
Aarhus archival image © Århus Stadsarkiv