Old and New Vallila. The early years of affordable housing production in Helsinki

Vallila is a showcase of Finnish social housing at the beginning of the twentieth century. Old wooden Vallila was built 1908–1915. It consisted of 22 small building lots, all meant to be built as one family houses by standardized drawings. As times were poor, the population grew out of control. In 1908, Bertel Jung started his work as the first town planning architect of Helsinki. He signed the first town plan for New Vallila in 1913, aiming at a clearly urban environment. Houses of three to four floors height were regulated by detailed facade schemes. Trees and greenery were respected in New stone Vallila and some blocks were built around private courtyards (Swedish name: storgårdskvarter). The biggest and most impressive of them is the block 555, started in 1916 as a company dwelling, and finished as a semi-communal project in 1929. The architects were Armas Lindgren and Bertel Liljequist. During the 1920s townscape was internationally in the spotlight, and Finnish architects followed keenly Nordic and German examples. They read and travelled a widely. Contacts with Swedish colleagues brought the peculiar dwelling type of landshövdingehus from Gothenburg to New Vallila. Italian architecture gave faith in the ever-lasting value of classicism.