Helsinki’s architectural depth and cultural vitality were enhanced this summer with a lively newcomer: the Amos Rex art museum, a center-city revitalization project by Finnish partnership JKMM, and the new home and identity for the Amos Anderson Art Museum, a private collection housed in a former office building that closed its doors in 2017. The iconic 1938 LasiPalatsi (Glass Palace) was selected as the museum’s new venue. Fully renovated, the low-slung white building (seen in the background) now provides entry to the museum and its underground galleries, while the larger project reimagines the adjacent square. Here, exuberant skateboarders, giggling children, and bemused adults swarm around a topography of playfully mounded concrete-tiled protrusions, each tapering to a circular aperture. Below, the various openings illuminate the exhibition spaces and provide glimpses of the civic world outside. The project’s biggest challenge, says JKMM principal Asmo Jaaksi, was how to make a museum extension visible and attractive, even though it’s subterranean. “Our idea,” he says, “was to ask: what if the building refuses to go down completely? What if it’s bubbling up from the ground?”