The Guggenheim Helsinki Museum is to house the collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and is to be an innovative multidisciplinary museum of visual culture in Finland. Located in the upper portion of the harbor, between the historical old town and the island of Katajanokka, the proposal has to mitigate between both the urban and the water edge in the newly designated cultural zone of Helsinki. Various edge conditions are employed allowing for variability in the experiential quality of the Harbor of Helsinki. The pools created by the existing boat docks are reinterpreted in the scheme as a continuation of pooling formations which introduce new social spaces to the waterfront in the form of: user inhabitable pools, carpet washing piers, an outdoor auditorium, and an enlarged waterfront promenade.
The Guggenheim relates contextually to its surroundings by being locally adaptive in its massing. Facing the Presidential Palace the building follows a rectilinear form and respects building heights as a way to interface with the Old City. In the newly developed waterfront landscape the buildings form adapts a stepped topology as a means of engaging the ground to allow for a continuity of the landscape onto the building roof (an elevated observation deck). In relation to the water the building form adapts by extending over the water in the form of cantilevers and bridges. A language of voids in the building form reinterprets the pooling formations of the landscape as a means to create looping vertical circulation and apertures framing the city.
Featured on UCLA A.UD
Status: School Project
Location: Helsinki, FI
