Skip to main content.

The Visualisation of the Seminaarinmäki Campus

Jyväskylä University Museum/Pirjo Vuorinen

What we have done before?

The Visualisation Project of University Museum of Jyväskylä is concentrated on Jyväskylä University old Campus, Seminaarinmäki. In the year 2000 the University Museum, Department of Art and Culture Studies and also ethnology started a teaching and research project. The purpose of the project is to study the area as an entity from viewpoint of different disciplines for example architectural and social milieu. The two main objectives have been the old main building Seminarium and the old drawing and woodwork hall Villa Rana.

On this Project we have had four main ambitions: to gather and study new information of Seminaarinmäki, to confirm the conservation of this old Campus, to teach our students how to work with cultural heritage and to plan and produce material to our new exhibition, which is going to be build to the Seminarium-building after renovation project 2007.

Why Seminaarinmäki?

The Seminaarinmäki area is a remarkable cultural-historical and architectural object in Finland. It is protected by an order issued by the Government of Finland. The buildings representing different styles serve as examples of the ideals of campus construction in their own time, which were connected with roots both European and national culture and learning.

Seminaarinmäki is located in the south-western corner of the Jyväskylä ridge. The built History of the Seminaarinmäki is 125 years old and it is the history of Jyväskylä University as well. This history is usually divided in tree periods: Teachers Training College (1863-1934), The College of Education (1934-1966) and The University of Jyväskylä (1966- ).

The oldest buildings on the Seminaarinmäki Campus date from the 1880’s and were built to the Teachers Training College, the first Finnish training institute for elementary school teachers. Those buildings designed by architect Constantin Kiseleff, five brick buildings, 20 wooden buildings and a grey stone forge, were visible from near and far across the region. Recently near all wooden buildings in Seminaarinmäki as well as in the centre of the Jyväskylä have been pulled down. This kind of operation has been very typical in Finnish wooden architecture and wooden cities.

More than seventy years later, in the 1950’s and 1960’s began a new period of intensive construction in Seminaarinmäki. The result is a unique architectural whole designed by architect Alvar Aalto. After that 1970’s architect Arto Sipinen made plans for new University buildings like The University Library and The Administration. Those buildings are the result of 1969 Nordic architectural competition which Sipinen won. Nowadays we can talk about the fourth architectural level because of those new buildings designed in the year 2001-02 by architects Ilmari Lahdelma and Rainer Mahlamäki.

The objective of the Seminaarinmäki 3D-bridge project is:
1.To find out what kind of architectural and social milieu Seminaarinmäki used to be in 1920-1930’s an d how the area has changed
2.To save the data in 3D-Bridge format
3.To develop a model example of digital organisation and presentation of multimethodical data.