Guggenheim Helsinki Museum - Fragmented Continuum
Moreau Kusunoki Architectes was just crowned winner in the Guggenheim Helsinki Museum’s unprecedented, anonymous design competition. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation selected the Paris-based architecture firm’s environmentally friendly proposal ‘Art in the City’ from nearly 2,000 submissions from around the world. The museum will comprise nine low-height volumes and a lighthouse-like tower. Moreau Kusunoki Architectes’ ‘Art in the City’ was determined winner by an 11-member international jury after a yearlong competition process.. The competition- winning design is planned for Helsinki’s South Harbor area, and it will be clad in locally sourced charred timber and glass.
The Guggenheim Helsinki must represent a new museum paradigm, just like every Guggenheim museum has been before. The proposal is an iconic lighthouse, but also a sustainable architecture that is more than a landmark. It is a place which invites and draws together both the visitors and the community of Helsinki to meet with art and architecture. Tomorrow’s museum has to be thought of in terms of horizontality, openness, flexibility and public engagement.
The museum is a shared ecosystem that enables a conversation between the visitors, the staff, the art and the urban fabric. It is not only a place for display: artistic productions permeate the building and its activities by their presence. The fragmented continuum, articulating heterogeneous activities in a variety of spaces reflects the inhomogeneity of modern and contemporary art.
These activities do not take place in confined or hidden rooms but in transparent and open areas, allowing social and surprising discourse to happen in a cultural context. The museum should establish the conditions of fruitful narratives. It is a place that challenges minds and emotions, a place that creates memories.
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Materials provided by Moreau Kusunoki Architectes