Tiirasaari Opistola

Tiirasaari, located on the west side of Lauttasaari, is owned by Lähi-Tapiola, and the several old wooden buildings on the island are used for the company’s PR and training purposes. The island is beautifully located with an open rocky shoreline and trees. Opistola is the oldest villa there, with oldest parts from the end of 1800s. Stylistically the building represents neo-renaissance, but also nuances of art nouveau can be seen, for example in the round tower motifs and small windows of the front façade. It was characteristic for joiner’s style to have richly decorated and multi-colored wood-construction façades. Today, the villa serves as a seminar space. 

Along the decades, ornaments had been removed from the villa, the windows had been replaced with wood-aluminum windows, the roof with red-coated sheetmetal and all the wooden parts had multiple layers of light-colored paint on them. The aim of the renovation was to respect the original architecture of the villa and restore it closer to its original appearance. The external envelope of the villa was thoroughly renovated; the windows and the external door were replaced with wooden ones and their framing were designed based on old drawings; the sheetmetal roof was renewed, excluding the copper roofs of the veranda towers, the railings of the terraces and stairs were renewed according to the models in old pictures, decorative cuts were restored on the façades and the spiras reaching for the skies were elevated on the roofs. 

At the time of these photos, the sheetmetal work on the façades and the roof had not yet been painted with old copper-like color. Also, the oil treatment that darkens the boards of the terraces and stairs had not yet been applied.