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Who came up with it? Where did the idea come from? Certainly not out of the blue. At a big construction site, casting concrete is a daily task, with always some extra material. The thought was bubbling under for a while around the worksite and the Tripla office and eventually it formed into actual idea: let’s put the leftover concrete to good use by making it into concrete roadblocks.
This is what the coin-shaped concrete barrier looks like. In addition to yellow, there also will be green, purple and red concrete road blocks in Tripla, colour-coded by the area to which they will be placed. The colour-coding makes it is easy to navigate Tripla’s massive car park – the coloured blocs guide you from the elevators inside the mall all the way to your vehicle.
From the very beginning of the Tripla redevelopment, a core value for us has been to question the obvious and to find new perspectives. The same also goes for details. So, instead of a monotonousblock of concrete with nothing to say, we wanted to make the Tripla road blocks unique and identifiable.
– We decided that we want the road blocks to be in line with the Mall of Tripla’s brand and visual identity, says project engineer at YIT, Attina Salmenoja – So it felt very natural to hand over the designing of these road blocks to Pentagon Design who are in charge of our visual identity and its applications.
Pentagon Design met the challenge with enthusiasm.
– This is a one-of-a-kind project for us. Never in Pentagon Design’s history have we designed a road block before, says senior designer at Pentagon Design, Anna Hoskonen.
– We were given creative freedom with the design process. We knew from the start that the end result would be highly visible, as the road blocks will be placed for example around the entrance of the elevators and escalators at the car park of the Mall of Tripla as well as outside the mall. They are a Tripla specialty that draws attention and makes a memorable impression to visitors.
Pentagon Design embarked on the design process with Tripla’s logo in mind. The end result is a fun, coin-like shape that appealed to all parties involved. The final thing left to do was to make the mould and cast a prototype with concrete to see what the final block would look like.
– Finding a mould-maker meeting our specific needs wasn’t easy, so the construction staff suggested that our own carpenters could try and make the moulds from leftover plywood, Attina describes.
– This recycling idea was of course perfect for the project, as the whole thing started off with our desire to make good use of the leftover concrete. It didn’t take more than a few weeks until the boys had made their first mould. We used it for casting the prototype, which turned our very good.
Anna Hoskanen says that the Pentagon Design team was also very pleased with the fact that the construction staff eagerly jumped at the project.
– They provided great feedback for further developing the product. It was their idea to make dents underneath the road block so that it is easy to move with a pallet truck. Now these heavy, one-metre-wide concrete barriers can be moved around by one man alone. Teamwork really brings the best ideas.
– Seeing the finalised product of course felt great! It is the first tangible thing to come out of our long design process – and it looks so good, which assures me that we have taken the right directions when it comes to design, Anna says.
