"Mom, we need to go through this together a bit. If a child sees something shocking, they must be able to talk about it with a safe adult, so that there is no trauma," my daughter stated on Sunday on the terrace of the cottage.
He was holding a magazine that I had inadvertently left lying on the sun lounger. A magazine that was full of adult fantasies that could be harmful to an impressionable and sensitive mind.
My confusion was alleviated by the fact that it was the official housing fair catalog of Deko magazine and my daughter is 21 years old. She has already moved in and set up her home to her liking, and no longer looked at shiny pictures with completely virginal eyes.
We browsed the catalog together and smiled in disbelief at the artificial, stage-like interiors and grandiose houses, which were designed as the backdrop of a dream life for "testosterone-rich", "laugh-loving" or "rock-spirited" developer families.
At the beginning of the week, I also visited Vantaa Kivistö to get to know the exhibition apartments on the traditional fair trip of Asuntoreformiyhdistys ARY. My hardened mind could no longer be surprised by church-like living rooms, giant outdoor jacuzzis, or even a 290 square meter detached house with six (6!) toilets and showers, each bedroom its own.
Through experience, I also know that not every man has a copper faucet and not all women dream of diamond wallpaper and dressing rooms. There is nothing wrong with even the wildest imaginations, but not all of them are meant to be realized.
The climax of my visit to the trade fair was the practical solutions that work in everyday life. In flexible Spinelli, the 66,5-square-meter apartment can be converted into a smart home with up to four rooms. There is also an excellent filler park with washing and service points in Spinelli.
Europe's largest wooden apartment building, PuuMera, on the other hand, offers, among other things, compact two-bedroom apartments of 39 square meters, where large balconies expand the apartment by ten additional square meters. A healthier trend can also be seen in single-family houses, where waste squares no longer make people sigh and carbon footprint is starting to be worth it.
For me, the biggest experience of the fair this time was definitely the smallest home, i.e. Sato's StudioKoti, which manages to hide everything you need for living in its more than 15 square meters with a spacious loft, even more so in a beautiful and inviting way. It is good to hope that the planned pilot site in Vantaa will receive an exemption permit and 68 mini-homes will have their happy residents with a monthly rent of 500 euros.
In the spirit of ARY, I would even suggest a housing fair reform. The theme of the fair should be affordable housing, which is not boring and conventional, but inventive and fun. The "everyday luxuries" offered by Messureit seem more and more like luxuries. There would certainly be demand for the reform even in the younger generation, which is just building its own images of what good living is like.
Merja Vuoripuro
Director, Communications and Responsibility
merja.vuoripuro@rt.fi + 358 40 587 2642Confederation of Finnish Construction Industries (CFCI)
Housing costs in the capital region are absolutely absurd these days. 500 euros is not "reasonable" by any measure, especially for an apartment the size of a cleaning closet. The housing price bubble should be burst as soon as possible, so that society does not have to pay for people's housing. A normal salary should be enough for normal people's housing costs without compressing living comfort to an inhuman level. Housing is a basic human need and it is worrying that basic needs can only be achieved by maximizing investors' business profits.
I've been thinking the same thing myself. Mire's pretentious and expensive construction, mostly boring interiors, e.g. massive sofas are invariably placed in front of the windows so that you can't see the beautiful scenery when sitting there, if there are any at all... the house next door and the neighbor's window are usually a few meters away. Where is the creativity of interior design professionals? Why are the houses so close together like townhouses. If I had that much money, I wouldn't build for a housing fair. In a much better place, you could even get a mansion by the lake or the sea! The most fun was going to the Kalajoki holiday home fair; after looking at a couple of houses and marveling at the crystal chandeliers on the roof, my husband and I concluded that we must have seen this fair!
Same thing. I went to the Kokkola housing fair a few years ago - and the only one I really liked. was a "seniors' or young people's apartment", i.e. a small, changing, bright, cozy apartment without the wonderful echoing church whose effect on raising the standard of living is not really clear to me. There was no color anywhere, but I didn't expect that either. Even my 12-year-old daughter sneered at Prisma's wallpaper department that "mom, doesn't anyone want some color for their home?"