The Kluuvi shopping centre is a shopping centre on Aleksanterinkatu

Aleksanterinkatu

Aleksanterinkatu is a street in the centre of Helsinki, Finland. In the city plan by Carl Ludvig Engel, it was the Decumanus Maximus, the main east-west street in the city, crossing the Cardo, Unioninkatu at the corner of the Senate Square.The street begins near the Presidential Palace and...

 in the Kluuvi

Kluuvi

Kluuvi is the commercial centre of Helsinki, Finland, and a neighbourhood in the Vironniemi district of Helsinki. The Helsinki Central railway station, the Helsinki main post office, the Stockmann and Sokos department stores, the Kluuvi shopping centre and the main offices of Finnish banks are...

 district in central Helsinki

Helsinki

Helsinki is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, located in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is , making it by far the most populous municipality in Finland. Helsinki is...

, Finland

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

. The shopping centre has about 35 business

Business

A business is an organization engaged in the trade of goods, services, or both to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, where most of them are privately owned and administered to earn profit to increase the wealth of their owners. Businesses may also be not-for-profit...

es (of which the most notable are G-Star RAW, Superdry

Superdry

SuperGroup plc is a British retail brand. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. The Group is made up of three main brands: Superdry, 77Breed and SurfCo California. Superdry products fuse vintage Americana fabrics with pseudo-Japanese text and have...

, Tiger of Sweden

Tiger of Sweden

Tiger of Sweden was founded 1903 in the Swedish town Uddevalla, by the tailors Markus Schwarmann and Hjalmar Nordström. It is a classical brand of men's wear. Tiger of Sweden began, during the 1990s, to develop suits attractive to the young and trendy inner-city crowd.Its line of products include...

, Fred Perry

Fred Perry

Frederick John Perry was a championship-winning English tennis and table tennis player who won 10 Majors including eight Grand Slams and two Pro Slams. Perry won three consecutive Wimbledon Championships between 1934 and 1936 and was World No. 1 four years in a row...

, Misako

Misako

is a feminine Japanese given name. Notable people with the name include:* Misako Konno* Misako Miyahara* Misako Odani* Misako Renbutsu* Misako Takashima* Misako Tanaka...

, George, Gina and Lucy, McDonald's

McDonald's

McDonald's Corporation is the world's largest chain of hamburger fast food restaurants, serving around 64 million customers daily in 119 countries. Headquartered in the United States, the company began in 1940 as a barbecue restaurant operated by the eponymous Richard and Maurice McDonald; in 1948...

, and Eat & Joy Kluuvi Market Hall). Kluuvi offers 10 new international brand stores first and only in Finland as well as a mix of some interesting Finnish retail concepts and restaurants. In the basement, you can find an eco-market hall concept representing local Finnish delicacies from more than 500 Finnish small producers. Also a bread-oven and fish smokery are located in the shop. The shopping centre was opened on March 15, 1989, and was designed by the architect bureau Castren-Jauhiainen-Nuuttila. It was refurbished and reopened with a completely renewed commercial concept 14th October 2011.

The shopping centre comprises the entire western end of the Aasi (donkey

Donkey

The donkey or ass, Equus africanus asinus, is a domesticated member of the Equidae or horse family. The wild ancestor of the donkey is the African Wild Ass, E...

) city block. It consists of five buildings (Aleksanterinkatu 7b, Aleksanterinkatu 9, Kluuvikatu 5, Kluuvikatu 7 and Yliopistonkatu 6), which are connected by a light yard covering the entire city block. The Aleksanterinkatu 9 building was formerly an Elanto department store

Department store

A department store is a retail establishment which satisfies a wide range of the consumer's personal and residential durable goods product needs; and at the same time offering the consumer a choice of multiple merchandise lines, at variable price points, in all product categories...

 (Veikko Leistén 1952), and its granite

Granite

Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...

 façade

Facade

A facade or façade is generally one exterior side of a building, usually, but not always, the front. The word comes from the French language, literally meaning "frontage" or "face"....

 contains a relief of a working-class family, sculpted by Aimo Tukiainen. The Kluuvikatu 5 and Yliopistonkatu 6 buildings are old residential and business buildings from the 19th century, and only their façades remain to this day. The Aleksanterinkatu 7b and Kluuvikatu 7 buildings were designed by Castren-Jauhiainen-Nuuttila as supplementary buildings for the city block.

The shopping centre can be accessed with the tram

Helsinki tram

The Helsinki tram network forms part of the Helsinki public transport system organised by Helsinki Regional Transport Authority and operated by Helsinki City Transport in the Finnish capital city of Helsinki. The trams are the main means of transport in the city centre. 56.6 million trips were made...

 lines 3T, 3B, 4, 4T, 7A and 7B, as well as the metro

Helsinki Metro

The Helsinki Metro , is the metro system in Helsinki, Finland. It is the World's most northern metro system, and currently the only one in Finland. The system was opened to the general public on 2 August 1982 after 27 years of planning...

 from the Kaisaniemi metro station

Kaisaniemi metro station

Kaisaniemi or Kajsaniemi is a station on the Helsinki Metro. It serves the central Helsinki district of Kaisaniemi. It is the only station whose name is announced in only one language: whether this is Finnish or Swedish is unknown and irrelevant, because the Finnish 'Kaisaniemi' and the Swedish...

.

Figures

• Businesses: 35
• Floors: 4
• Rentable area / shopping centre: approx. 10000 m²
• Distribution of area in the shopping centre:
• Parking spaces (P-Kluuvi): 725