The Kilpisjärvi Project: Case Study of Cold‐Regions Research in Finland

An experimental village at Kilpisjärvi in the northwest corner of Finland has been built to test state‐of‐the‐art materials and design techniques for cold regions construction. The Technical Research Center of Finland is conducting several diversified research projects at this site, which is characteristic of relatively remote subarctic conditions in Europe. Experiments and studies include evaluation of building‐foundation designs, cold weather concreting, housing design, vapor‐barrier tests, costs of construction in remote regions, road‐embankment materials and design, permafrost stabilization under roads and aufeis‐mitigation designs. Many of the experiments are in progress, and results have not yet been published or are published in Finnish. However, the variety of tests and the preliminary results promise a great deal of information over the next few years. In particular, the ability to successfully place concrete when air temperatures are $-29°C$ $(-11°F)$ promises to advance the state of the art in this field, and the field trials of several innovative housing‐design features will be of interest to builders and designers of cold‐regions structures.