Secret Tunnels, Strip Club & Science Hub – A Brief History of Junction 2017 Venue
In a couple of days hackers of Junction 2017 around the world will gather together under the roof of a building called Dipoli. The place has had a long career as a conference center, but there’s so much more to this unique architectural and cultural gem of Otaniemi. We’re definitely not talking about a boring, spiritless concrete hut. Let’s dive a little deeper into the story of Dipoli!
With its crooked surfaces and all differently shaped windows, in 1966 Dipoli was something Finnish field of architecture had never seen before. It was designed by architects Reima Pietilä and Raili Paatelainen to be the student house of Helsinki University of Technology. During decades the building has seen a lot: art, science, innovations and true student culture, like partys and music events – and even a strip club in the 1970´s. Since 2015 Dipoli has gone through a thorough renovation, and last summer it started its new life as the main building of Aalto University.
According to Antti Ahlava (Vice President, Campus Development, Aalto University), Dipoli is meant to support co-working between students, teachers, research scientists and partners of the university. Even though Dipoli provides students and staff with a lot of up-to-date technology (such as automatically functioning led-lightning and two-sided screens hanging from ceiling), Ahlava reminds us that Dipoli is not to be thought as a symbol of technical development, but a meeting point for people. Who knows what kind of new innovations may be born, when students and scientists of different fields put their heads together?
Next Friday there will be 1500 hackers of 96 different nationalities combining their skills in Junction. Dipoli is a perfectly inspiring environment for creating something new. But what kind of preparation needs to be done to build the biggest hackathon in Europe in a main building of a university?
Being so asymmetric, Dipoli as a venue is quite tricky. There are few straight angles and hardly any possibilities to hang anything from ceiling. For Sun Effects, the production company of Junction, planning the construction has required multiple visits to Dipoli. Every room has had to be measured individually, corner by corner. The construction team lead of Junction, Martta Jämsén, has similar thoughts about the challenging nature of Dipoli:
“ Some of the decorations and equipment must be lifted inside through a balcony, because the doors and hallways upstairs are too narrow for carrying them.”
Building the setting wouldn’t be possible without up to 60 volunteers. To enable all this, they are going to work three days from dusk till dawn. (Well, basically a lot longer, because the daylight time in Finland in November lasts about seven hours a day.) Rumor has it that there are going to be for example self made robots to perk up the atmosphere in Dipoli… What else are we going to see, hear and experience in Junction 2017? Let’s find that out next weekend, when fresh ideas, dynamic teamwork and new creations fill the halls of Dipoli!
