Allas Pool

This guide to Allas Sea Pool in Helsinki opens on the twelfth of January 2022, when Gabriella, a car ferry the length of a football pitch, lost power leaving the harbor and drifted straight into the pier beside the pool's wooden deck. You'll hear how the impact tore into the dock, the sauna building and the waterfront wall, on a structure that was never meant to be permanent in the first place. Opened in 2016 on a temporary permit, built entirely from weather-treated spruce because the city had long banned new harbor construction here, Allas was designed, quite literally, not to last. Look at the timbers around you now, pried up and replaced plank by plank after the collision, just steps from Helsinki's market square.