Helsinki’s Architecture and Design Museum Foundation Reveals 623 Design Proposals for Waterfront Project
Image by Sami Saastamoinen/Foundation for the Finnish Museum of Architecture and Design
The 623 entries received for the Finnish Museum of Architecture and Design design competition have been revealed. The project replaces the plan for a new Guggenheim Museum in Helsinki, which was proposed for the same prominent site on the city’s South Harbor but was rejected by the city council in 2016. The more recent, anonymous competition—another extensive open call rather than a smaller, invited competition—asked for conceptual proposals for a new 113,000-square-foot museum building—to house 900,000 artifacts including work by Aino and Alvar Aalto as well as Eliel and Eero Saarinen. The new building will be smaller than the Guggenheim proposal, won by French-Japanese firm Moreau Kusunoki, and will stand opposite the City Hall and the Presidential Palace, as was proposed for the earlier project.
While the Guggenheim was ultimately resisted by large parts of local government and a majority of arts professionals in Helsinki, in part because it threatened operational budgets of other arts institutions, the new project has cautious backing in local cultural circles as well as that of the national government. Finland’s Minister of Science and Culture, Sari Multala, said that “the Finnish government is deeply committed to supporting this project.” The rejection in 2016 by the Helsinki city council of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation affiliated proposal, was actually the second time that a proposal fronted by the New York foundation had been knocked back.
The financial set-up for the latest museum, which will combine the currently separate Design and Architecture museums, manages risk in a novel way. At the launch last week at the existing Finnish Design Museum (housed in a former school), Kaarina Gould, CEO of the foundation for the museum said “a real estate company will partner with the developer to build the museum, and then they will be the landlord for the building.” The real estate company is itself publicly owned. The foundation will pay for its tenancy from the proceeds of an endowment of 150 million euros, 120 million from state sources and 30 million euros from private foundations. The building of the museum will mean that ocean-going liners that still dock close to the city will be confined to areas farther away.
Although all the 623 entries, (less than half the number received for the earlier Guggenheim competition) have now been published publicly on the official website, competition organizers insist that strict anonymity is observed in this first stage. In December 2024, the Foundation will announce which three to five designs will be selected for Stage 2 of the competition, and award them 50,000 euros each. In addition, the jury, which includes Beatrice Galilee, New York-based executive director of The World Around, and Gus Casely-Hayford, inaugural director of London’s V&A East, as well as leading figures from the architecture and museum professions in Finland, will distribute further prizes at the end of the competition. The search for a director of the museum, due to open in 2030, has also begun.
All the entries can be viewed here.
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