Again my company sent me to my former home town to cover a story. This time it was about a renovation project.
An international foundation had spent 6000 euros to purchase an old silo. It was constructed in the 1930’s to store wood chips, which would later be boiled into pulp by a local mill. The mill and the silo were designed by famous architect Alvar Aalto.
The mill was closed down in the 1980’s. Some parts of it were demolished, others had found new use except for the silo. It was the world of pigeons. And when the foundation bought it, the first thing they did was to clean years and years of pigeon shit.
I travelled to the spot to write about their plans. I was promised a tour of the silo by the new owners – and the permission to photograph it myself at the same time.
So here goes.
Voted the ugliest building in the city a few years earlier, here it is in beautiful autumn colors. All in all, I think I should make photographing later in the autumn a habit. It’s beautiful.
The silo has windows on the ground floor. They have been covered to keep pigeons out.
And because of that it was very dark inside. This is the ground floor with a view to the basement.
Looking up. The wood chips have been stored in three large concrete containers.
An overall look at the ground floor. The floor above is supported with temporary steel pillars.
The entrance. We closed the door after us so that no birds would get inside.
The place had been used by several culture associations all the way until the 2010’s, when it was deemed unsafe and closed. There were even attempts to renovate the building, but it was too much for the operators.
Another look upwards.
And so we leave the ground floor.
The other floors were basically just a narrow corridor around the three large containers.
The insides were very rugged. Every single part was original.
The wheel has probably been used to control the flow of the wood chips from the containers. There was a conveyor from the silo to the building, where the pulp was boiled, but it is now long gone.
There’s really not much elsewhere to go than up.
That is where the chips entered the containers.
There was running water in the building. But no sewage according to the foundation. So where did the waste water go?
And so we reach the top. One specialty of the silo was, that its floors were suspended from above with the metal rods seen in the pictures. Typical of Alvar Aalto to come up with something like this.
One more crawl space up there.
And here it is. The roof has been leaking.
Looks like a very old heater. The person in the picture with the torch is our guide.
The fuse board.
One final shelf at the top.
Next it’s time to head down. And focus on some details.