Planning and construction Planning the Haukilahti water tower started in the mid 1960s when construction in southern Espoo was in its most intense growth phase. The tower was designed in conjunction with another water tower in
Mäkkylä, which was later cancelled due to planning of the
Otaniemi water tower starting. Challenging parts of the design included the concrete
spherical cap shaped water containers, whose calculations were done by computer, which was rare in Finland at the time. The capacity of the tower was planned for a community of 40 thousand inhabitants. after which the lower caps of the container were cast on the ground and then lifted on top of the pillars with
hydraulic lifts. The lower part of the water container consisted of two spherical caps, of which the first had a diameter of 40 metres and weighed 1230 tonnes. The overall volume of the water container is 4100 cubic metres, A lookout café or restaurant was planned into the tower since the beginning. A deal was made to rent the top part of the tower for restaurant use with
Elanto in September 1968, but nothing became of this plan. The space was rented in March 1969 by the entrepreneur couple Tauno and Lydia Roiha, who managed their restaurant up to the early 2000s, when the ownership of the restaurant passed to a new generation and was taken up by Markku Roiha. Up to 1987 the restaurant held so-called "disco nights", but the restaurant has since profiled itself more as a catering restaurant and a lunch venue for corporate clients. The structures of the tower were thoroughly examined and a repair estimate was made based on the examination. The renovation was done taking care to preserve the history and original structure of the tower under supervision of the
Finnish Heritage Agency, as the tower is an architecturally and locally significant building. The Haukilahti water tower was still seen as a usable and necessary part of the waterworks of Espoo in the 2010s. It served the needs of 70,000 inhabitants in 2013 and is the only water tower in the Helsinki capital region open to the public. ==References==