Make Helsinki PROJECT FOR Itä Pasila
Concrete, grey, empty spaces everywhere… Itä-Pasila needs colour, people, and plants to be all it can be. Where is everyone?
There is a certain sense that the largely immigrant population is shying away indoors, the students just there to sleep, and nobody else going there except by chance in passing to access the fair grounds or the public library. Why is this the perceived norm? My belief is simply that public space is unaffirmed and only a transit area.
There is an incredible potential here to turn the neighbourhood inside out, and gradually transform what many consider an architectural monstrosity into an inspiring icon of past utopias full of creativity as residents explore new directions for wrapping their collective identity around the detached urban fabric.
aitoa arkkitehtuuria 
Nemo propheta in patria sua : No one is considered a prophet in his hometown.
Reading your blog I am so happy that there are outside prophets like
Aitos friend Thomas Ermacora, who can see Pasila with Other Eyes.
To Aito the friendly Muslim students in Pasila will naturally say:
If you tell the Truth — > keep your horse ready.
I read again the whole linked article by Thomas Ermacora.
The ideas are fine, interesting and OK: more down to the earth,
even practical, than normal designers up in the Helsinki sky.
Also Frank van Hasselt gave me a trustworthy impression:
his first name sounds honest and straightforward.
Now, two things changed a bit my thoughts conserning the Nemo
propheta-slogan above. First the local workshop, MakeHelsinki,
where e.g. Demos members have a chance to bravely jump up and prophesize for their hometown. That is a very healthy gymnastics .
Second. I looked at Aito´s projects in this Blog. Now and again I
realized that just here are also very strong ideas for the future of a
much more human Itä – Pasila. Therefore it is healthy gymnastics to
turn things up side down: Everybody is a prophet in their hometown
A third time I wanted to read the article by Thomas Ermacora.
Well, what a surprise: I suddenly was in South Bronx, Manhattan:
Wherefrom came this touching video made in the summer of -06?
A young women talking too fast – slowly she touches everyone.
I think I will remember her for the rest of my life. Getting curious?
Here she comes, against all odds, from a ghetto made green: