Heinola City Library Plaza

Heinola is located about 140 kilometers north of Helsinki with some 20 000 inhabitants. The small plaza outside of the library was under renovation. Vesa Honkonen was asked to create lighting that would give this place a special value and marked identity.

The street and the plaza are quite anonymous, however the place has a good scale. Lighting is often too even and boring. Usually Vesa’s principle is to hide the lighting fixtures and let the space take the main role.
This time he felt that the place needed more. Fixtures started to have a life of their own. Since it is a library plaza, they started to get a shape of a reading lamp, casting the light down, lamps sheltered with large cover in order to avoid glare. Then these fixtures started to wonder where they are. They started to look around, both sides, behind themselves, further away. Suddenly this place was conquered by 15 individual creatures, looking around, casting the sharp beams of light to the direction of their sight.

This place has a special character of light and design which does not interfere with the quiet architecture that creates the place itself. They are friendly visitors, like cattle visiting a field.

City of Heinola

Mari Koskinen, Tiina Olli