Pasila School
Place: Helsinki, Finland
Team: MASU Planning (Landscape architect), Talli Architects, Mer Architects, Rambøll OY (Engineers) and TerraWise OY (Landscape contractor)
Client: City of Helsinki
Size: 3.170m2
Timeline: Completed 2025
A school that helped define an entirely new piece of Helsinki.
The Pasila Comprehensive School and Day-Care Centre serve as a cornerstone in the transformation of the former Pasila railway area into a new, dense urban neighbourhood.
Aurinkokello, Finnish for “sundial,” is a school and daycare project that combines level changes, planting, and play into a single composition, creating an outdoor environment that is both practical and welcoming while supporting children’s everyday lives through a careful balance of topography, vegetation, and play.
The small site, situated on steep terrain with an elevation difference of approximately 8 metres, posed challenging conditions and suffered from a significant lack of space. To make the most of the limited area, all schoolyards are located on the rooftops of the building. This creates a clear structure for different age groups and activities, while vegetation is used to frame play areas, create shelter, and give the landscape its identity.
Furthermore, all outdoor areas are optimised through a variety of multifunctional elements that serve as play areas, learning spaces, and recreational zones. The parkour structure also functions as a gymnastics installation, the play area naturally transforms into a performance stage, and the atrium stairs serve both as part of the infrastructure and as an assembly space.
Lush rooftop schoolyards
Resembling hanging gardens, one of the main ambitions of the landscape project has been to introduce as many plants and green areas as possible into the outdoor environment. The lush planting both divides and connects the different spaces, creating a pleasant microclimate and a more intimate scale where children, pupils, and visitors are sheltered from both wind and the hard surfaces of the surrounding city. The variation and diversity of the planting also have educational value, and all species have been selected from a robust palette that supports insect life.
Vegetation inspired by costal landscapes
The selected species and their combinations can withstand varying weather conditions. Raised planting beds feature a vibrant mix of perennials, gently swaying ornamental grasses, shrubs, trees, evergreens, and ground covers, drawing inspiration from the resilient native species found in Helsinki’s rocky coastal landscapes.
In accordance with the objectives of the City of Helsinki’s Education Division, the school building uses space efficiently while also offering versatile facilities for residents. High-quality, durable materials have been used to create a robust and accessible meeting place for the community.
