Creativity in Action: Brick by Brick

Otahalli was the first sports hall in Otaniemi and was designed and built by architect Alvar Aalto. The Helsinki University of Technology's student housing in the Otaniemi campus hosted the athletes competing in the Helsinki Olympic Games in 1952, also raising much needed funds for further student housing and the construction of what would become the Dipoli building.

Sculptor Wäinö Aaltonen was commissioned by the Finnish government to create a statue of the Finnish runner Paavo Nurmi after the 1924 Paris Olympics. Five bronze casts were made of the statue measuring over 2 meters in height. While one of these the large bronze statues was erected in front of the Helsinki Olympic Stadium in 1952, Aaltonen also donated several of the miniature statues to the Helsinki University of Technology Student Union, some of which remain in the AYY archives. While the exact number is not known, almost all were sold to raise further funds for the Olympic Village Project, the Teekkarikylä Project and Dipoli.

One of the sculptures which escaped being traded was used in a famous Tempaus involving the Vasa warship which sank off Stockholm in 1628. When Swedish marine archeologists began to salvage the shipwreck in 1961, it came to shore with a miniature Paavo Nurmi Sculpture, planted by student divers with the Latin inscription translating as 'Paavo Nurmi, the Great Finnish Runner'.