Role: Project manager & design lead for project completed at WOHA Architects
Status: Competition (2014)
The future Guggenheim site is poised at a crucial urban intersection of city axes, a bustling harbour, and a hilltop park. However, the current site condition terminates this junction of urban features in a prosaic and disjointed manner. Our proposal aims to bridge these civic gaps with a museum that pieces together disparate urban elements to enhance the civic realm of the city.
The key architectural strategy was informed by three site attributes: the prominent urban axes of Helsinki, a missing connection between Tähtitorninvuoren Park and Eteläsatama, and the requirement for continued port operations. One decisive move allows these civic goals to be achieved simultaneously- raising the museum above Laivasillankatu Road to connect the park, harbour, and city. In front of the building, an expansive public plaza is created, bustling with activity from spill-out museum programmes among large-scale sculptures and a harbour and cityscape backdrop. At the other side, another public space joins directly to the slope of Tähtitorninvuoren Park, allowing events, sculpture gardens, and a grassy outdoor amphitheatre-basin to spill out into the park.
The typological convention of the museum as an insular art container is inverted to employ the museum as an connective urban device, improving not only the experience of museum visitors, but the daily lives of Helsinkians. The rectangular museum footprint is sliced diagonally to create a vibrant museum lobby doubling up as an activated public thoroughfare. This frames spectacular views to Helsingin Tuomiokirkko at one end, and the verdant park to the other. The lobby can be opened up during summer to encourage public use, and closed during the winter as an inviting winter garden. (Text by WOHA Architects)
