Modern Home, Environment, and Gender. Built, Planned, and Lived Spaces in Post-war Finland

This is the way a man recalled his new childhood home of the early 1950s in the late 1990s, when more than 300 suburbanites recorded their written memories of suburban living in the Helsinki region from the 1950s to the 1970s. 2 Housing in Finland underwent a major change after World War II. New homes and their modern facilities revolutionized everyday life and held out optimistic promises of a better future. 3 The narrators repeatedly contrasted the luxuries of new spacious apartments with their previous inadequate dwellings. Modern conveniences such as piped water, indoor toilets, shining bathrooms, standardized kitchen fittings, and balconies symbolized the change and aroused feelings of joy and happiness.