Unconventional Wisdom
The Making of H otel St. George How a group of creative visionaries is challenging the way a hotel is made. Text Thomas Rogers Photography Stephanie Füssenich
It’s a clear day in September, and Mirkku Kullberg is looking out over the leafy Vanha kirkkopuisto, a park in the center of Helsinki, from one of the luxury suite balconies of the still-unfinished Hotel St. George, a new ambitious property set to open its doors several months from now, in March of 2018. “It is so exciting for me that something I was just imagining a few months ago now exists,” says Kullberg, the project’s creative director and guiding force, turning back to survey a room filled with construction workers and equipment. “There used to be nothing here.” Kullberg, who has large expressive eyes and usually dresses in flowing black, is new to the hotel industry. After almost a decade heading Artek, the iconic Finnish furniture brand cofounded in 1935 by design legend Alvar Aalto, she walked away from the company. She began 70
work on the St. George in 2016, at that point a project still in its infancy. Building a world-class hotel is, unsurprisingly, a remarkably complex endeavor. It requires the ability to unite countless different elements — design, food, wellness — under one central concept. And even by those standards, the St. George is an especially daunting project. The building is a historical landmark that once housed the presses for Finland’s first newspaper and the Finnish Literature Society. Its oldest section dates back to the 1840s, while the rest was designed at the end of the 19th century by noted Finnish architect Onni Tarjanne. And the hotel is emerging at a moment when Helsinki is coming into its own as a tourist destination. The city, which is nestled in a scenic archipelago of bays, inlets, and forested islands, is
