UKI’s growth in Finland’s capital area
The two working units of UKI Arkkitehdit will merge in the start of the year 2019, as Arknova – previously working as an affiliated company – fuses into UKI Arkkitehdit. The ownership of Arknova was gained by the Oulu office in the spring of 2017.
In mid-October, Mikko Kaira took the lead of UKI Arkkitehdit Helsinki office. In his opinion his most urgent task is to find suitable working spaces for a group of ten architects.
The Helsinki Office is a center stage of UKI Arkkitehdit’s growth plan. According to Mikko Kaira, UKI’s personnel count shall grow approximately to twenty people in three years’ time.
“UKI is already working at large in Oulu so we need to find growth elsewhere. That is possible in the capital area – the market here is big but also very competitive”, he says.
Market in the Helsinki area offer suitable conditions for growth, and Kaira mentions that growth is also a necessity: “To be able to compete, we need to be sufficiently big. That creates plausibility and resources for taking on large scale design projects.”
Mikko Kaira also mentions that one of UKI’s special assets is expertise in interactive design.
In the capital area, the office strives to strengthen its positions in all its design fields. Kaira brings up UKI’s expertise in land use planning, in which UKI has gained fame in several competitions.
Previously Mikko Kaira worked in Finnish Consulting Group as the head of the architectural industry.