Buildings disappear faster than you expect.
In 2019, I set up a tripod on Siltasaarenkatu in Hakaniemi and shot a 30-second exposure of an unremarkable office block. Functionalist facade, mid-century bones, nothing you would photograph twice. Seven years later, that building is gone. In its place stands Lyyra, an award-winning mixed-use quarter designed by ARCO Architecture Company and Cederqvist & Jäntti Arkkitehdit. Same street corner. Completely different city.
Shoot what exists, not what matters
We photograph buildings because a client needs images now. But the secondary value of architectural photography is documentation. Every building we shoot becomes a record of a specific moment in a city's life. Hakaniemi's old office block had no architectural significance. Nobody commissioned that 2019 shot. But that photograph is now the only professional record of what stood on that corner for over 50 years.
Lyyra rewrites the corner
Developed by Ylva for the University of Helsinki's student union, Lyyra stacks offices, a hotel, 178 rooms, apartments, restaurants, and a metro entrance into two buildings connected by a pedestrian street. Light brick facades with patinated copper trim at different shades per section. It won a Global BIM Award in 2024 and targets LEED Platinum certification. We returned to the same corner with the same focal length, 16mm, to document what replaced what we had already recorded.
Every shoot is an archive entry
Cities move. Helsinki is demolishing and rebuilding at a pace that outstrips memory. A photograph taken for one purpose today serves a different purpose in five years. We treat every production as documentation first, client deliverable second. The camera does not know which buildings will survive.
See more of our Helsinki work in the Exteriors Gallery.