Respecting the past, living in the present: A thoughtful renovation story

Laura Mattila and Mikko Merz designed the renovation of their home to respect the building. For the duo running design and architecture studio Mattila & Merz, the home offered the opportunity to carry out a meticulous renovation that dug deep into the history of the apartment – without any time pressure.

Residents:

Architect Laura Mattila, architect and cabinet maker Mikko Merz and children Laila and Tuula. The apartment is located in Vallila, Helsinki, in a building completed in 1925. The floorspace of the apartment is 51 m².

BEAUTIFUL, ELEGANT AND respectful of history. These words could be used to describe the renovated home of Laura Mattila and Mikko Merz, perfectly matching the style and atmosphere of the building dating back to the 1920s.

The work of architecture and design studio Mattila & Merz pays homage to history and traditional manufacturing methods, which is also reflected in the couple’s own home. Before and during the renovation, Laura and Mikko familiarized themselves with the apartment’s characteristics and original solutions with particular attention to detail. Even though the renovation was carried out with a restorative approach, it was also driven by the need to make the 51-square-meter apartment meet the needs of a modern family with children. Best of all, there were no strict deadlines to follow in the renovation of their own home.

The apartment building completed in 1925 in Vallila, Helsinki, is a textbook example of the decade’s social housing, designed to improve the living conditions of working people.

The home is proudly a former working-class residence, and the couple is not trying to make it more than it is.

“As a working-class dwelling, our home embodies the aesthetic of functionalism. I found the original building specification in the archives, and it said that the doors should be of the cheapest model and that the ceiling medallions in the largest rooms should be simple plaster medallions. The pigments, such as lampblack and yellow ochre, and skirting boards are also simpler and cheaper than in middle-class homes,” says Laura.

“The best way to honor the spirit of an old building is to choose materials that match the building’s architecture, meaning that there’s no point in trying to convert a working-class apartment from the 1920s into a bourgeois neo-Renaissance-style residence.”

Ever since she was a child, Laura has dreamed of living in a local-history museum where she could still sense something of what is no longer there. The charm of living in a century-old stone house is based on a similar experience.

“We enjoy the presence of history in this place. That someone has lived in these rooms before us, touched the same doorknobs and heard the floorboards creak underfoot,” describes Laura.

For Laura and Mikko, the restorative renovation was a journey into the history of the apartment.

“When we bought the apartment, all the surfaces were yellowed by nicotine. But below the dingy surface, there was still much of the original that just needed to be scraped, peeled and scratched out. For example, all the rooms have original wooden floors. However, unlike in many other buildings from the same era, the floors were wooden to begin with, meaning that the floorboards were not just a substrate for linoleum,” says Mikko.

Laura scraped the walls with a scalpel, revealing colors from different stages of the apartment’s history. It turned out that the walls in the kitchen had always been painted, whereas the walls in the other rooms had originally been wallpapered. The shade for the walls was picked based on the greenish gray originally used in the kitchen and mixed by Laura from pigments. The surfaces were masked along the original lines for painting. The finishes of the surfaces treated with traditional paints vary depending on the type of paint, affecting how each space feels.

The history of the apartment is reflected in the materials – both original and those used by Laura and Mikko.

Fortunately, the previous residents had not got rid of all the old elements in their enthusiasm to renovate. It was, for example, possible to restore the interior doors, which had been turned into flush doors in the 1950s, back to their original state. There original skirting boards and architraves had also been kept, although refurbishing them was a massive undertaking.

No walls were moved during the renovation. However, the kitchen was moved to the largest room of the apartment to meet the needs of the family of four. Located on the side of the morning sun, the old kitchen was turned into a room for Laila and Tuula. The color was discussed with the girls: Tuula wanted the walls to be painted in lilac and Laila in green.

However, Laura made the final decision based on the fact that the shade should be timeless and provide a beautiful setting for the life lived in the apartment. When the girls carry their dollhouse into the room with green walls and start playing, it is clear that the apartment has become a home.

See also:

• New arrivals at Finnish Design Shop >
• Mattila & Merz on Instagram: @mattilamerz

Text: Selina Vienola Images: Paavo Lehtonen

The story was previously published in Asun magazine 48.