The competition is organised by the Housing Finance and Development Centre of Finland (ARA) together with the City of Lahti, the Lahti Science and Business Park, and the departments of architecture at the Tampere University of Technology, Aalto University and the University of Oulu.

PURPOSE

What?

An ARA-financed rental housing building or group of buildings built in the Sopenkorpi district in Lahti in 2049.

How?

Reasonably priced, ecological, adaptable, innovative, accessible and comfortable.

Why?

Here will still be a need for high-quality social housing production in 2049.

The competition brief is to outline what social rented housing might look like in 2049 and to design an ARA-financed residential building or group of buildings in the Sopenkorpi district in Lahti. What is important in this brief is to identify with the situation on the ground and to create a bold vision for the future. The aim is for entrants to consider the problem field of housing in the future and to identify themes to explore in more detail in their design.

RIGHT TO PARTICIPATE

The competition is open to all registered students of university-level institutions. Entries may be submitted by individuals or teams. Entrants are encouraged to form multi-disciplinary teams, although each team must include at least one student of architecture. It is acceptable for competition entries to be supervised in teaching contexts at the student’s or students’ place of study.

COMPETITION AREA

The competition area is the Sopenkorpi district in the city of Lahti, as shown in the appendices. Entrants are free to choose a site within this area where to locate their design.

The Sopenkorpi district is an industrial estate near the city centre of Lahti, the green areas of Salpausselkä and existing transport connections. The area is delimited by the railway to the south and southeast, by highway 12 to the north and by a low-rise housing district to the west. To the northeast there is a small lake named Mytäjärvi, the area around which is popular for recreation.

Most of the buildings currently occupying the district were built gradually between the 1930s and 1990s. Most of the red-brick industrial buildings date from the 1940s. The district as a whole has cultural and historical value, being the only extensive and diverse industrial and workshop estate to survive in Lahti.