engineering

Itämerentorni

Itämerentorni is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Itämerentorni rather than just read about it. In short: Itämerentorni (Finnish for "Baltic Sea Tower") is a high-rise office building located in the district of Ruoholahti in Helsinki, Finland. It is part of the Itämerentorni complex which also includes a lower, curved building at the foot of the tower.

Key takeaways

Itämerentorni belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Itämerentorni to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Itämerentorni from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Itämerentorni (Finnish for "Baltic Sea Tower") is a high-rise office building located in the district of Ruoholahti in Helsinki, Finland. It is part of the Itämerentorni complex which also includes a lower, curved building at the foot of the tower. The building serves as an office for SITRA and PricewaterhouseCoopers. The building is located near the Länsiväylä highway at the Itämerentori square. The building is 66 metres tall and has 18 floors. The building was completed in 2000 and was designed by architect Pekka Helin. In 2000 the building was awarded the steel building of the year prize.

General The building employs about 600 people as of 2004. The lower part of the building has three five-floor office wings curved around an inner courtyard and a work healthcare centre. The high-rise building has office spaces, and negotiation spaces and a sauna on the top floor. The ground floor holds the lobby and negotiation spaces. There is a covered, heated inner courtyard of almost a thousand square metres in the middle of the building. The two basement floors of the building host technical spaces, storage rooms and social spaces. There is a parking garage for 370 cars underneath the ground. In 2012 the insurance company Etera and SITRA sold the building to Exilion Capital Oy for a total price of 85 million euro. The office spaces in the high-rise building remained in use for SITRA. The lower part of the building hosts an S-market grocery store.

Building

Structural framework The framework of the building consists of steel pillars and beams and intermediary floor elements made of steel-reinforced concrete. The basement floors were cast in place. The intermediary floors and the roof of the inner courtyard of the Itämerentorni building are post-tensed and cast in place. The gallery is topped with a curved steel-supported glass structure 30 metres in diameter. The courtyard is surrounded by glass-walled office spaces with intricate steel-supported glass walls.

Facade The facade of the building has a double facade structure. The choice was made because of city image and architectural reasons as well as a desire to cut down on investments and energy consumption in HVAC technics. Another reason was to lessen the impact of weather on the outer walls and details, to cut down on maintenance costs and to improve noise dampening and information security. The principal material of the facade is weathering steel, acting as a link between the red brick architecture of the old industrial buildings in the area and the high tech buildings. Reasons for selecting the material include its ecological properties, such as full recyclability. The outer steel surfaces consists of weathering steel cassettes 1.5 millimetres thick and the inner surfaces of small-waved warped sheets 1.0 millimetres thick. Weathering steel is used on the grill, shaped steel, coping, attachment of the cassettes and partly in the supporting pillars. The facade of the tower also uses acid-proof steel intended to lighten the appearance of the facade. The outer walls are made of thermally structured, string-like light elements, supported by INP structures between the vaults. The glass coating is made of tempered glass 6 to 8 millimetres thick and of laminated glass in the curved part. The area of the glass plates is 2692 x 855 millimetres in average. One glass plate weighs about 30 kilograms. The windows are fixed, with vents opening to an intermediary space 925 millimetres wide with gravitational venting. The windows are fitted with motorised blinds. Maintenance of the double facade is done through exterior beams on the water roof.

Gallery

References

External links Media related to Itämerentorni at Wikimedia Commons Emporis - Itämerentorni

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Itämerentorni

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Itämerentorni claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Itämerentorni before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Itämerentorni ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Itämerentorni

In research: Itämerentorni appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Itämerentorni in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Itämerentorni is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Buildings and structures completed in 2000, Buildings and structures in Helsinki, Ruoholahti, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Itämerentorni outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “Itämerentorni” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Itämerentorni in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Itämerentorni means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Itämerentorni out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Itämerentorni in simple terms?

Why does Itämerentorni matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Itämerentorni?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Itämerentorni.