A magnificent complex has risen between Hanko marina and a residential area consisting of old villas: Hangon Regatta Suites consisting of magnificent holiday apartments and a seaside spa, Hangon Regatta Spa, offering wellness services.
The 43 apartments in Regatta Suites are set in three blocks and their size ranges between 52 and 150 square metres. The materials used in the building include natural stone, light-colour ground rendering surfaces, wood panelling, aluminium and glass.
The developer in the project is Regatta Resorts Oy, whose owners are private investors, and the founding contractor is Hartela Länsi-Suomi Oy from Turku. The buildings were designed by architectural firm Cedercreutz Arkkitehdit Oy.
Light and light colours
The apartments have unobstructed sea views, big windows and exceptional room height – in places up to 2.9 metres – which makes them spacious and filled with light. The starting point was to offer high quality seaside living that is appropriate for Hanko's scale.
– We wanted to design a building complex whose expression of form respects the small scale of Hanko. Even though the building has three floors, it does not look like a normal block of flats but rather like a cluster of small houses, which blends perfectly with the Tehtaanniemi landscape. In the indoor spaces, on the other hand, light tones and the natural light let in through the large windows is in an important role, describes the architect, Sebastian Cedercreutz.
The walls of the apartments were painted with Tikkurila's full-matt Harmony interior paint and the ceilings with Siro 2 primer and ceiling paint. Harmony, which leaves a velvety matt surface, suits the spacious, light space perfectly.
– We definitely wanted a matt surface so that the reflections of light would be as beautiful as possible. A strong sunlight turns the walls into softly glowing surfaces of light that create atmosphere and are easy on the eye in a completely different way than a glossy surface. Of course, it was important that the wall surface also withstands some cleaning, says Cedercreutz.
A demanding but rewarding project
The large windows and light wall surfaces demand a lot from both the products and the professionals working with them.
- This was a very demanding site. When there are big windows and white walls, high quality workmanship is required from the painter and the filler man. In an apartment filled with light, an uneven end result can be seen immediately, says site foreman Dennis Hindersson from Hartela.
– Of course, challenges make this work
Head of Hartela's painting department, Auno Heininen, emphasises that precision, meticulousness and the high quality of products were required at the site.
– Although I have been with Hartela for 40 years and painted hospitals and other special buildings, this was one of the most challenging. The huge living rooms – 60 square metres at their biggest – floor to ceiling windows, special accessories like fixtures delivered from Italy and whirlpools sunken into the terrace, as well as the demanding customers, had an impact on the painting schedules and methods, says Heininen.
Painting the ceiling, in particular, required a lot of skill.
– If scaffolding had been used, overlapping could not have been avoided, so the ceilings had to be painted from the floor by hand. We used two working methods at the site: we either painted the ceiling directly with a roller at a rapid pace, or then one painter spread paint with a spray gun and another followed with a roller. When rolling the paint direct to the ceiling, it is difficult to achieve an end result that does not have overlapping, it requires a lot of skill. But both methods worked well and the end result was quite spectacular, says Heininen.
Text Meri Peltola
Pictures Tero Pajukallio and Hartela Oy
Illustration Cedercreutz Arkkitehdit Oy
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