Practically all apartments being sold in Helsinki center are actually shares of housing companies:
Housing companies are a typical housing system in Finland. The shares in a housing company confer on their owner the right of possession of a specific apartment. The shares are treated as personal property and can be sold and used as collateral for a loan. The company is responsible for the management and upkeep of the building and joint facilities. The housing company system makes it possible to have non-subsidised owner-occupied apartments and free-market rental housing, as well as State-subsidised owner- occupied or rental apartments all in the same building.
Sales of housing company shares and single family houses are most active among the seasoned housing stock. New production brought to the market by the building companies is only part of total yearly sales of apartments in housing companies. The number of dwellings changing ownership has varied greatly according to the economic trends, interest levels and the development of household incomes. Naturally, the prices of owner-occupied dwellings have followed supply and demand on the housing market.
The housing company often sub-contracts the actual management of the house to a management company that acts as a middle man between the shareholders and the various physical service providers such as cleaning companies, waste management companies and other maintenance services.
Kiirava is one of the high profile real estate management companies in Helsinki. Nodium was commissioned to do a complete make-over for their web site. To emphasize their broad and prestigious client base, a photograph of a random client is shown each time the front page is loaded.
Posted by api at 09:05 - No Comments »
In 1982 Steven Spielberg bought the Rosebud sled used the film Citizen Kane
Substance:
That which underlies all outward manifestations; substratum; the permanent subject or cause of phenomena, whether material or spiritual; that in which properties inhere; that which is real, in distinction from that which is apparent; the abiding part of any existence, in distinction from any accident; that which constitutes anything what it is; real or existing essence.
Cathexis is a Freudian term referring to the process of investment of emotional energy to an idea, object or a person. Although I’m not a big fan of Freud (and who is?), I do think that he is onto something with this particular concept. People do, more or less consciously, invest serious amounts of time in contemplating about their favorite thoughts. Whether they are about ideas, physical objects or persons is really irrelevant.. you become more and more emotionally attached to your “pet thought” as you pet it by thinking about it. This is a mental mechanism that enables advertising to work so well. It enables products to be sold for much higher exchange value than their actual use value is. A beauty product is not only some cheap mixture of chemicals in a jar, but a symbolic vessel of an entire lifestyle carefully constructed by the manufacturer and the marketer of the product. A heirloom signet ring of a family is a circular, metallic concentration of generations of memories and traditions. A special photograph or a letter can be the most valued possession of a millionaire. Emotionally speaking, objects like this are worth thousands of times more than a seemingly similar, but a “non-authentic” e.g. copied or pirated object. Even if it has the exactly same signature, logo or picture on it, a non-authentic object may fail to satisfy the emotional desires of the observer.
As technology proceeds and memories are more and more frequently stored in digital form, an interesting dilemma with emotional attachment is bound to emerge. When a particularly meaningful photograph is originally stored only as a digital file only, are the identical, bit-for-bit copies indeed as good as the original? Will people store and cherish old e-mails, screen shots, text messages and chat transcripts with as much care as people used to store their love letters? How about the cloning of pets and, who knows, perhaps even children in the future? The insurance companies sure are careful to include a clause to not compensate for the “emotional value” of anything.
Cathexis is often a pro-active process. An individual’s hopes are sometimes projected and concentrated onto a single target. It might be their family or a business venture or a piece of art they are creating. The more time we spend thinking about a single subject, the more dependant we become on it. In the film Citizen Kane, the word Rosebud written on a sled is a token for poor, but happy childhood. It is sometimes worth to stop and think over what are the most valuable Rosebuds in one’s own life. They are often much more vulnerable and fragile than you might initially think. If you do not prepare for it, suddenly you realize that you’ve lost some of them only when it’s too late. A loss of inspiration or dignity can be just as devastating as a loss of a friend or, to some extent, even health. To quote another great film, Fight Club…
You’re not how much money you’ve got in the bank. You’re not your job. You’re not your family, and you’re not who you tell yourself. You’re not your name. You’re not your problems. You’re not your age. You are not your hopes. You will not be saved. We are all going to die, someday.
Posted by api at 11:39 - 1 Comment »
