The evening brought me to another town, fairly colorless, ugly and flat. On one of the best spots of the town, by a lake, right in the heart of it was also its most beautiful building: an old school built in 1950.
It looked empty, but so did every school in early June. I Googled the place, and it indeed was empty. To my utter shock the town wanted to demolish it. They had had an ongoing battle about it since 2018.
My first reaction was and still is, ‘what the fuck’. The plan really is yet another crime against architecture. They couldn’t really be serious.
The lower wing probably contained the school gym.
The school seen from the back, where there is a lake. If this was a mansion, it would probably have been built the other way. That way it would probably have attracted an investor. Unfortunately it was a school.
Somebody has made the effort to write the name of their bike on the wall. I mean, really?
The corner of two wings in the backyard.
And the view from the courtyard towards the lake. This really has been one of the most beautiful places to go to school in Finland.
The other wing has most likely originally been the teachers’ apartments or even a dorm for pupils. The area is so remote, that the distance to the nearest school has really been long back in the days.
Moving back up front. The fate of the building was still being debated in late 2024, when this post was written. But between the date of writing and the date of publishing a breakthrough came. The appeals court denied the demolition permit. The building will now hopefully be saved.