Client: Municipality of Sipoo, Finland, with partner Livady
Location: Nikkilä, Sipoo, Finland
Year: 2018–2019
Sector: Heritage · Typomorphology · Interactive Mapping
An interactive map classifying every listed building in Nikkilä by historical period, road age, and heritage value — turning a built-heritage survey into a public, filterable tool rather than a static report.
Before Sipoo’s town centre of Nikkilä could make informed decisions about its built heritage, it needed a clear, evidence-based picture of what it actually had — not just a list, but an understanding of how the settlement grew and which parts of it matter most.
Commissioned by the Municipality of Sipoo as a built-heritage survey of Nikkilä, delivered by SPIN Unit Lab in cooperation with heritage-data partner Livady. This was the first of what became a three-phase engagement, continuing into building-selection refinement and a colour analysis phase in 2020.
99 listed buildings were classified into four historical phases reflecting Nikkilä’s actual growth — from rural church village (1400–1850), through railway-driven expansion (1850–1914), around the former Nikkilä Hospital/Asylum (1914–1980), to the present — cross-referenced with road construction era (1840/1900/1920/1990) and an A/B/C heritage value grade. The result was published as a filterable interactive map (built on CARTO), rather than a static report.
Delivered as a live, public-facing dashboard letting users filter Nikkilä’s building stock by period, road age, and conservation value.
- 63 of 99 listed buildings fall into the “village to municipal centre” phase — the largest single category, and most of Nikkilä’s street network dates from the 1920s.
- The classification is historically specific to Nikkilä’s own growth path, not a generic template — including a phase built explicitly around the former Nikkilä psychiatric hospital, a defining feature of the town’s development.
- Delivered as an interactive, filterable public tool rather than a static PDF — letting residents and planners explore the heritage stock themselves.
Gave the Municipality of Sipoo a reusable heritage baseline that directly fed into the next two phases of the engagement — building selection and colour analysis — rather than a one-off survey.