LOCATION
Helsinki, Finland

STATUS
Unbuilt

AREA
Total Gross Floor Area: 10,020 SQ M
Total Net Floor Area: 6,205 SQ M

DESIGN TEAM
Daniel Kaven, Partner-in-Charge
Trevor William Lewis, Partner
Mike Perso, Director of Architecture
Joel Dickson, Project Designer
Kendra Shippy, Project Designer
Jeff Dunn, Project Designer

CATEGORIES
Museum, Public Space

HELSINKI NEW MUSEUM
OF ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN
Helsinki, Finland

While considering our proposal for the New Museum of Architecture and Design, our team was most interested in how a museum could open its walls to the public, and become a completely free and social space. Instead of the classical approach, preserving art within opaque walls, our proposal imagines an open glassy atrium, displaying the art within to anyone enjoying the outdoor plaza or passing by on the Laivasillankatu or waterfront below. As visitors enter the main volume, they move up through overlapping bars of exhibition spaces via a larger social stair. The exhibition spaces merge with the circulation zones on the edges of the atrium, creating curatorial opportunities for more open, public display and more controlled, secure spaces for exhibits that require it. The central space also creates opportunity for full-height (18M+) displays suspended from the ceiling and seen from the exterior.

Along with the strategy of opening the museum up to the public, we want to invite them in. By creating a continuous flooring treatment of stone tile extending the interior finish of the ground level museum space out into the plaza, we express the notion that the museum is for all people. Urbanistically, we have created an exterior social space with built-in bench seating, trees for shade, and green landscape mounds to allow for rest, play and visual interaction with anyone passing by on the seaside trail on their way to the market square, city center, or elsewhere. The building steps down from the buildings to the west and north, still creating cultural energy but respecting the character and massing of nearby structures.

ECOLOGICAL, SOCIAL & ECONOMIC SUSTAINABILITY

We believe that the most sustainable thing an architect can do is to design a building which becomes so integrated into the social and cultural life of a place that it lasts. Along with efficient systems, shading, passive cooling and other means, we aim to create a place that is socially sustainable, attracting visitors who arrive in cars, buses, streetcars, boats and bicycles to enjoy art exhibitions, concerts, and theatrical performances both within the formal exhibition spaces but also on the bridge levels surrounding the atrium and outside in the plaza.

A glowing beacon in the wintertime, changing with the seasons and sustaining city life throughout the year.