Helsingin Energia renewed their visual identity in 2013. It was a good time to reshape their main lobby at Sähkötalo headquarters too. Sähkötalo (Electricity Building) is an old power plant, which was renovated with a new building by Alvar Aalto at 1973. There is also an energy exhibition, which has existed in different locations since 1909.
 
The interior design was created by service design company Diagonal Mental Structure Oy. Our task was to include all the needed contents into blank exhibition furniture and design some missing ones too. It took about one and a half year to create everything. But it was worth of it because Helsingin Energia was honored with Design from Finland Mark afterwards.
1. Reception
Behind the receptionists there is a luminated wall with the logo of Helsingin Energia. Normally it is white like in the picture, but there's also possibility to change colours in all six different hues of company's visual identity. 
 
 
2. Lounge
Customer is able to search information from screens, leaflets and pads in the lounge area next to reception. There's also the history of Helsingin Energia visualized as a time line on the window. 
 
3. Customer service
 
4. The energy exhibition
The exhibition begins from the Sun – the power source of the Earth. There is a video screening of the sun with ambient sounds (in the middle). In the text there's different views how the Sun effects us. 
 
The luminated infrastructure stand is the crown jewel of the exhibition. It is at the same time a little bit retro but also ultra modern. When you press the buttons it shows you for example the electricity, heating and cooling systems of Helsinki City with animated leds. This was created with two guys from Hacklab Helsinki and everything in it is handmade. There's four layers of plexiglass, thousands of hand soldered components and a cooling system under the map of Helsinki.
 
In this picture the cooling network is luminated.
And close up of the city center.
 
After the opening of the exhibition we started to improve existing stands and created some new stuff too. This cable stand was one of the hardest to build because the genuine cables hanging from the roof. The heaviest of the cables weights about 30 kg so the suspension was really behind a hard work.
 
Here's some close ups of the stand. There's a map of the power production in Finland, an embedded miniature model of artistic electricity pylons known as Antin Askeleet, and peeled examples of every cable. Couple of them were still in production when these pictures were taken.
 
The propellant stand was also a result of hard work. First I designed the tower of different propellants without knowing the amounts of them. And when I got them I was in problems. The amount of natural gas was almost ten times more than the rest of the propellants. So here you see the result. The huge balloon looks like flying but the truth is that it is heavy as hell.
A close up of the propellants. There really are oil and charcoal in it.
 
These are four district heating pipes. The diameter of the largest one is almost one meter. There's also a manhole cover which is grinded 5 mm flat.
 
This one is a fun one. A power lifting device for children and why not for adults too. The task is to guess how much the copper cable weights. I can say that it is not the lightest one.
Laundry room
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