Nordicum - Real Estate Annual Finland 2012

Living in the Future? Suurpelto community offers a glimpse of tomorrow today Suurpelto is a real living lab environment, not just a living lab for marketing purposes,” says Pekka Vikkula, Project Manager for Suurpelto. Just about every new development project in the land claims they are doing something new and extraordinary, but Suurpelto really appears to be delivering the goods. F or one thing, in Suurpelto services are produced in a brand new way. The apartment buildings, for example, feature a designated services space at the lobby, which is both a drop-off and pick-up point for meals, medicine or groceries – or just about any type of service. Logistical expertise and operating/coordinating excellence join forces in Suurpelto to make sure that the residents get the service they need – when they need it. In fact, Suurpelto promises to maximise innovation and living comfort in a way that is without equal in international comparison, too. The community features also an underground waste disposal system where the residents drop their garbage through a waste chute and sufficient negative pressure is created to suck the garbage to a waste terminal. From this terminal, waste is delivered on for further processing by trucks. “The waste system is the first of its kind in Finland,” Vikkula explains. The green streak of the community is evident also in the construction of low-energy apartment buildings. Ready for School Suurpelto is a blueprint for something new, a vision for a community where the best and the brightest minds meet, along with cuttingedge products and services. According to the City of Espoo, this type of an approach is certain to attract also international residents – and to offer further proof, the new Espoo International School will open its doors right here in the autumn 2015. Presently, the new community has 42 Nordicum about 1,000 residents –and will continue to add another thousand inhabitants every year from now on for quite some time. Ultimately, the new community is supposed to house around 7,000 residents. Suurpelto is a “final frontier” in the sense that it is just about the only remaining strip of land in the core of the Greater Helsinki Area that enables greenfield approach. Located right next to Ring II, Suurpelto is within a striking distance from Espoo city centres and even downtown Helsinki is only a fifteen-minute drive away. Nevertheless, despite its urban location, Suurpelto is very much a garden city, integrating into Espoo’s broad-spanning Central Park. All and all, Suurpelto encompasses 325 hectares, 89 hectares of which have been reserved for parks and green areas. More from the Core One thing that has been missing from Suurpelto is a clear heart. Now, NCC Property Development has drawn up a plan together with architect agency Tommila to create a Service Campus for the community. While the earlier blueprint called for lots of offices in the centre, now the direction is towards residential development and community services. “The plan for Service Campus encompasses 200,000 floor square metres, allowing for the development of very versatile functions and services,” Vikkula says. Also Olavi Louko, the Direc tor of Technical and Environment Services for the City of Espoo, is pleased with progress the new community is making. “The development of Suurpelto is very important for the City also in the sense that a truly innovative environment is being created there,” Louko says, adding that the whole community encourages a pioneering mindset: experimentation is the preferred method of doing things in Suurpelto. Suurpelto is also participating in the World Design Capital 2012 by realising an information pavilion with a service design approach. The information pavilion rounds up the residents and players of the area to create new services that help develop the community onwards. Sami J. Anteroinen

Nordicum - Real Estate Annual Finland 2012 | Page 44