Kakolanmäki (Kakolabacken)

English translation (from the Finnish)

The text above is the record as published by the Finnish Heritage Agency (Museovirasto), in Finnish. The English below is a machine translation made by TreeAlive, not by the Finnish Heritage Agency (Museovirasto); it has not been checked by a person. Where the two differ, the original is the record. Report a translation error: privacy@treealive.com

Description

Kakolanmäki is the largest historical prison area in the country. Its building history and existing building stock illustrate in a multifaceted and multidimensional way the stages of penal administration and the development of prison architecture. Kakolanmäki is the most important site complex of our nationally significant built heritage of the prison system.

Kakolanmäki has been developed as a prison area from the mid-19th century onwards, and three different closed institutions had been established there by the early 20th century. The first of these, and also the largest, originated in the 1840s, when the ojennuslaitos to be founded in Turku was decided to be sited on Kakolanmäki. The ojennuslaitos, a penal institution from 1858 (later kuritushuone and keskusvankila), was joined at the end of the 19th century by the lääninvankila (remand prison), and in the early years of the 20th century by the vankimielisairaala (prison psychiatric hospital). The building stock from the founding phases of the institutions and from their essential historical extension phases has for the most part survived. Changes required by the development of operations have mostly been met by altering the interiors of existing buildings, without touching the exteriors or, for example, the surrounding walls, including the enclosure walls.

The historical building stock dominates the general appearance and views of the prison area. The palatial, natural-stone-clad main flank of the former ojennuslaitos/rangaistusvankila looks high towards the Aurajoki over the slope in front, laid out as a park. This view is part of Turku's key visual imagery. The large western cell wing, later than the main parts of the same institution, dominates the western aspect of the prison area. The former lääninvankila, for its part, is oriented towards the residential blocks extending northwards at the foot of Kakolanmäki.

The building stock outside the closed institutional complexes consists chiefly of residences for institution directors and other staff, built in the latter half of the 19th century and the early 20th century, arranged as carefully designed courtyard groups. Kakolanmäki also has staff apartment blocks, technical buildings, storehouses, guard booths and other elements related to prison operations. Components of Kakolanmäki also include the Serpentiinitie park area, the quarry used in building the area, and the hill's distinctive topography.

History

On Kakolanmäki in Turku, the ojennuslaitos begun in the mid-1840s was completed in 1853 to the design of E. B. Lohrmann, intendant of public buildings. It comprised a three-part main building façade clad in local granite, known as 'kakoliitti', with a large enclosed courtyard and outbuildings formed behind it. At the end of the same decade the institution was designated a rangaistusvankila (penal prison). The necessary alteration work continued until the early 1860s, and during it some of the important features of Lohrmann's project were realised, such as the courtyard's surrounding wall and the Serpentiinitie with its park on the front side of the institution.

In the late 19th century, the nationwide programme of cell-building construction, required by the needs of prison administration under the reform of the penal system developed at that time, brought to the courtyard of the kuritushuone additional buildings arranged as night-cell and day-cell wings, fitted into a V shape and attached to the central axis of the main building. These cell-block wings of the early 1870s belonged to the first phase of the great building era of cellular prisons, and were based on the work of L.I. Lindqvist, architect of the Board of Public Buildings (yleisten rakennusten ylihallitus), in adapting the basic features of contemporary international cellular prison architecture to domestic building conditions.

Among the characteristic results of the great building era of cellular prisons at Kakolanmäki was also the lääninvankila built in 1887-1890 in the eastern part of the hill, with its surrounding walls and brick surfaces left unplastered throughout. On the east side of the kuritushuone courtyard, a special red-brick building for so-called boxes (sleeping cells) rose in 1893-1894. Later, in 1905-1908, the prison psychiatric hospital with its own enclosing walls was built in the north-western part of the area. This was designed in cooperation between the Board of Public Buildings and the Medical Board, and included study of comparable institutional solutions, particularly in Germany. In many ways the preparations showed that this was a completely new type of institution in Finland. The last major building project at Kakolanmäki was a large cell building (so-called Länsiselli) completed around 1912, immediately west of the kuritushuone. In the exterior of the new buildings of the early 20th century, granite quarried on site was used.

Building design at Kakolanmäki was handled from the outset by the state building administration, consulting prison administration experts at every stage. The bodies involved were the Intendentinkonttori (Office of the Intendant), its successor agency the Board of Public Buildings, and the regional organisation of the building administration (the lääninarkkitehti of Turku and Pori Province, and the district building office), and subsequently, from the early decades of the 20th century onwards, the prison administration itself with its own design staff.

Prison use of Kakolanmäki ended in 2007, after which preparations began to bring the prison area into new use.