The Faculty of Law will be based in 'Juridicum' for the next two years.
The Faculty of Law, deeply rooted in the Porthania building, is now getting used to its new environment in the district of Kruununhaka. The relocation is by no means a permanent one, and will last just a couple of years while Porthania is undergoing renovation. The temporary facilities of the Faculty of Law are next to the Faculty of Educational Sciences in the Apollon building at Siltavuorenpenger 1.
Removal vans with the Faculty's possessions left Porthania in June, and now, at the start of the academic year, almost everything has found its place in the new facilities.
"The move went extremely well, but with the summer holidays, things kind of came to a halt. Now we must focus on wrapping things up and clear the moving boxes and other junk from the corridors so we can finally settle in," says Dean .
Spacious rooms, spectacular views
The brick building, completed in 1910, was designed by Architect Gustaf Nyström to originally serve as the department building for physics. Physicists gradually vacated the building in the early 2000s, as new buildings for them were erected on Kumpula Campus. The vacated facilities were first occupied by scholars of psychology, cognitive and educational sciences, and now, by legal sciences scholars.
The old building has the characteristics of a historical building.
"Everything is big, as in previous times. The building was designed in a grandiose style with wide corridors and colossal stairways. My general impression is that people are very happy with the facilities," Mähönen describes.
Sure enough, there are challenges. The corridors echo so loudly that it disturbs others' work. Mähönen expects that a solution for this can be found.
Typical of an old building, each room is different. Whereas the rooms in Porthania were mostly alike, the rooms in Apollon are all a different size and layout. Some rooms offer a spectacular view of the sea all the way across the bay to Kruunuvuorenranta, while others open to the inner courtyard. The building houses both personal offices and shared workspaces.
"Of course, we are trying to come up with fair and well-functioning solutions, and we also must keep in mind that so far, we have been working with plans on paper. Only now are we beginning to see how things work out in practice. Should anyone feel that their working conditions are poor, we will try to remedy the situation, as changes can still be made."
Teaching across the City Centre Campus
While the building is spacious with high ceilings, it offers few facilities suitable for teaching. In future, the Faculty will provide teaching across the City Centre Campus, practically in every building that houses teaching facilities.
Lectures with large numbers of participants will be given in the auditorium in the University Main Building, which at the moment is the largest teaching room on the City Centre Campus.
The distance from the Kruununhaka facilities to the Main Building is a 15-minute walk. In other words, not very long, but long enough that it makes no sense to walk back and forth several times a day. Therefore, the Faulty has rented a workspace in Topelia for the staff to make stops in between lectures.
Workdays in the Siltavuorenger facilities are bound to offer new inspiration and social contacts. One could assume that now the scholars in education and law will get to know each other better.
"We have already received invitations from the professors of educational sciences to meet them in UniCafé Olivia. I'm getting the idea that that's the place for meeting colleagues."
Apollon or Juridicum?
At the end of the interview, we can no longer avoid the hot issue - the name of the building. When psychologists and cognitive scientists moved to the building in the early 2000s, they named it 'Psychologicum'. Following suit, the legal scholars quickly named their new home base 'Juridicum' and began lobbying for the name to become official. At one point, it looked like they could succeed.
"But this was a losing battle. The building is called Apollon, and that is only logical, with the neighbouring buildings being Minerva and Athena. In the Faculty, we will obstinately continue to refer to it as 'Juridicum'," Mähönen chuckles.
