Kajaani Police Station and Art Museum

Eino Pitkänen (1904–1955) moved to Kajaani in 1932 and founded Finland’s northernmost architectural office there in 1940. The city was undergoing a period of change, and the architect’s office’s role in the post-war transformation of Kajaani’s townscape from a wooden town to a small modern city was significant. After the war, a lot of everyday functionalist architecture designed by Pitkänen’s office was built in the villages of the north.

In 1936, a new police station designed by Pitkänen was completed in the centre of Kajaani on the site of the former wooden police station building. The new building was a composition of interlocking cubes and the city’s first functionalist-style building. Together with the neighbouring neoclassical Town Hall from 1831, it formed an interesting and equal pairing in terms of scale and architecture. The facades of the police station had a hint of classicism in the portico and proportions, as well as in the interior. In terms of construction, it was a solid brick building rendered white, with an open open floor plan, horizontal fenestration and simple detailing. The gently inclined flat roof was hidden behind the cubic frontages. The building’s interior was rational. The ground floor comprised the inquiries desk, cells, washrooms and toilets, a caretaker’s apartment, a garage and a stable for two horses with their maintenance facilities. On the first floor were the facilities for the senior and other police officers, the archives and a high-ceilinged gym and lecture hall. In the basement were a boiler room and fire-wood storage.

In the 1980s it was decided to establish an art museum in Kajaani as part of the Kaukametsä Congress and Culture Centre, for which an architectural competition was organized. In 1985, however, the police station was converted into the so-called Art Hall. The construction of a new building was abandoned during the economic recession of the 1990s, and in 1993 the former police station was converted into the Kajaani Art Museum.

Currently, the Art Museum’s basement is used for storage, on the ground floor are the entrance hall, public spaces and exhibition spaces, as well as one preserved jail cell, on the first floor are further exhibition spaces, and on the second floor staff facilities. The staircase in the middle of the building is the original one. The Art Museum’s offices and conference rooms are housed in the adjacent Town Hall, and the fenced yard area between them comprises a sculpture yard. Except for the dismantling of a few walls, the transformation into an art museum has been done through simple measures, and the additions are neutral in appearance. The museum serves especially as a space for changing exhibitions, and the location of the building in the city centre serves well the new use.

Helena Hirviniemi

_____________

City of Kajaani (2022), “An art museum in an old police station”, Kajaani Art Museum: https://www.kajaani.fi/en/culture-and-sports/kajaani-art-museum/an-art-museum-in-an-old-police-station/ (accessed 29.11.2023)

Hirviniemi, Helena (2010). ”Pohjoinen funkis. Esimerkkinä Erkki Huttusen ja Eino Pitkäsen arkkitehtuurin suojelu ja restaurointi”, in Arkkitehtuurin historia ja nykyaika, Juhlakirja Kaisa Broner-Bauerille. Ed. Raimo Ahonen et al. Oulu: Department of Architecture, University of Oulu, Series A 50.

Hyttinen, Annamaari (2016). Kajaanin vanhan poliisitalon historia, AMK thesis, Kymenlaakso University of Applied Sciences.

”Museovirasto Valtakunnallisesti merkittävät rakennetut kulttuuriympäristöt” (2009). Kajaaninjoen historiallinen kokonaisuus. Museovirasto: https://www.rky.fi/read/asp/r_kohde_det.aspx?KOHDE_ID=1290 (accessed 29.11.2023).

Tervonen, Päivi, ed., (2001). Eino Pitkänen, arkkitehtinä Kajaanissa. Kajaani: Kainuun museo.