Guggenheim Helsinki

GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM/ HELSINKI FINLAND

A city needs a place to expand and contract, to explore and confirm. Our proposal approaches the design of the Guggenheim Museum, not in a traditional manner. Connected Horizons challenges the city to reach beyond the landscape’s edge and explore the new possibilities a Guggenheim Museum can offer the city of Helsinki and its reach across the globe. Its predecessors have created a presence that can only be added to by expanding the possible and exploring extreme passion and prestige. From the harbor, the Guggenheim Museum is a new beacon for the city, marking a place both familiar and new. A blending of horizontal lines and vertical masses interact with the cities horizon allowing the vista of the city to be heightened both from land and water. The goal of our proposal is to generate a connection with Helsinki’s culture, its citizens and the visitors from all over the world by the creation of a new precedence for a modern museum.

The globalization of architecture has forever changed the local vernacular and the expectation of the foreign element. The hybridization present in our proposal looks for a reconfirmation and a forward thinking for a new museum. Our proposal releases the confinements of the traditional museum and frees the curator and visitor; a space is no longer only defined by its precondition but the exhibition. The future of the gallery is not predetermined space, it is idealized curation. Art cannot adapt to a room; a room must adapt to the art. At first, this simplification can be seen as a generic solution. We argue for the specific but leave the unknown and future condition to be determined.

The three main compositional elements of the museum are the landscape circulation plates “Connected Horizons,” the Exhibition Boxes, and the Landmark Towers. The main upper exhibition spaces are open boxes awaiting the moment, a contradiction to a prescribed space. The gallery is designed similar to a film studio. The visitors produce the action on the set. The gift is the perimeter, its circulation, the above and below.

The blurring between exterior and interior occurs. In any museum, the wings are not the moment of connection; it is in the circulation where we exchange a premise, discuss a thought, reveal a find. Our design hybridizes this moment allowing for an open exchange and visual connection to Helsinki, the harbor and the museum guests and vise versa.

The unique all wood structure supports the upper exhibition floor and the Landmark Towers. The towers are both a visual and sculptural element functioning to bring controlled light into the main exhibition boxes. The movement of the inner fabric ceiling allows a curator to manipulate and alter the space and light quality. In addition, a large rectangular skylight at the lower perimeter of the towers bring light into the upper and lower exhibition spaces.