Helsinki Seafarers’ Centre is a Haven in an Industrial Landscape

Commercial sailors arriving in Helsinki, Finland find a comfortable and inviting facility to welcome them and offer a respite from long stretches of time at sea. The <a href="http://www.dailytonic.com/helsinki-seafarer%E2%80%99-centre-by-ark-house-architects-fin/">Helsinki Seafarers' Centre</a> designed by <a href="http://www.ark-house.com/01_11.html">ARK-House Architects</a> is an alluring and contemporary building that offers a warm and inviting counterpoint to the surrounding steel warehouses and stacks of <a href="http://inhabitat.com/tag/shipping-container/">shipping containers</a>.

The building site preserves native trees and a small rocky outcrop, helping to make it even more of a pleasant refuge. The curving form of the building recalls the lines of seafaring vessels -- the extended end of the building calls to mind the prow of a viking ship.

The building is designed to seem both familiar and yet also new, in order to make a comfortable and relaxing place for visitors.

The building forms of the Helsinki Seafarers' Centre are reminiscent of wooden ships. The tapered ends are suggestive of the prow of a viking longship.

The building's structure and cladding are both wooden, and its form is meant to create, in the designers' words, "something tantalizingly strange yet hospitable" for visitors from all corners of the globe.

Chapel space in the Helsinki Seafarers' Centre.

Inviting interior space within the Seafarers' Centre.

Overhead view of the Helsinki Seafarers' Centre and the rock and tree landscaping on the site.

Interior of the Helsinki Seafarers' Centre.

The Helsinki Seafarers' Centre sign on its wood clad exterior. The wood siding resembles wooden ship construction.

The Seafarers' Centre interior is a welcoming, glassy daylit space.

A perspective model showing the arrangement of spaces within the Helsinki Seafarers' Centre.

This site plan of the Seafarers' Centre shows the sinuous form of the building and the adjacent wooded and craggy landscape on the site.

Helsinki Seafarers' Centre side view.