[3] Contrary to the district's name, Westend is located in the very southeastern corner of Espoo, west of the Helsinki city centre, by the shore of the Gulf of Finland.

There are also some well-preserved parts of the World War I era land and sea fortress Krepost Sveaborg in Westend.

There are also old trenches in the area near the border between Westend and Haukilahti, built during the First World War for defending Helsinki from a possible German invasion.

The Westend area was owned and planned by the lord of the Hagalund manor, Licentiate of Medicine and tennis champion Arne Grahn,[4] and a park avenue has been named after him.

In 1945 Grahn commissioned Otto-Iivari Meurman to design a similar plan for a "city" of about 12 thousand inhabitants to be built on the Hagalund lands, and in the early 1950s he sold the area to the Väestöliitto federation, which bought it for the new Asuntosäätiö foundation.

The structure of Westend was based on Meurman's ideal of an English garden city, whereas the development of Tapiola was done by the leader of Asuntosäätiö Heikki von Hertzen and younger architects (Aarne Ervi, Viljo Revell, Markus Tavio), targeting a new urban vision.

Functionalist buildings include Liinasaarentie by Olavi Numminen in 1938 as well as Villa v. Heiroth by Matti Finell in 1936 at Mansikkatie 2 and Länsilinnake 12 designed by Aulis Kalma for sculptor Gunnar Elfgren in 1939.

Modernist buildings include the prominently straight-lined Grönhagen house designed by architect Eero Eerikäinen at Hiiralankaari 3 in 1954.

The Villa Ulfves building (Kuninkaanniemi 2) designed by Kristian Gullichsen was built in the early 1960s, representing a type of bungalow with spaces wrapping around an inner atrium.

[11] The spa hotel project has fallen behind schedule, as Heini Wathén, also known as a beauty queen, made a complaint about it to the European Commission in November 2013.