Earlier this year, news broke that the Finnish government had vetoed plans for the Guggenheim Helsinki Museum, a controversial satellite of the famed New York institution. Now, a new proposal has been prepared by the City government and the museum’s support foundation, which will be presented to the City for a final vote on the fate of the project.
The Guggenheim Helsinki was first proposed in 2011 but was voted down by the City of Helsinki in 2012. Afterwards, the Guggenheim Foundation prepared a new proposal and helped organize a massive design competition—one of the largest ever. The relatively-unknown studio Moreau Kusunoki Architectes won the competition.
According to estimates, the museum would cost around €130 million. The new plan proposes that the City of Helsinki would finance the majority of the costs, around €80 million, while the Supporting Foundation would put in €15 million. The rest would come from private sources, which already are said to have reached unprecedented levels according to Helsinki standards.
If approved and completed, the City of Helsinki would be the principal owner of the museum and foot the bill for costs incurred by the building—about €6.5 million. The rest of operating costs would come from the Supporting Foundation, private funding, and the Finnish government.
While economic analysis suggest that the museum would be a boom for tourism and help the city rake in a sizable amount of a money, there is no guarantee for their investments. The plan is another attempt to echo the success of the Bilbao Museum, or the so-called “Bilbao-effect”, where a single, iconic work of architecture was a windfall to the city. Attempts to replicate the phenomenon have had mixed results.
Want to hear more about the project? Listen to our conversation with Moreau Kusunoki Architectes on Archinect Sessions:
For more on the Guggenheim Helsinki, follow these links:
3 Comments
Let me tell you some personal thought about the competition as one of the participants...
I suspect the reason why it didn't get the support from the City of Helsinki is the Juries and their inapt handling the competition to focus on the real issues.
They neither found appropriate entry with elegant solution to the rather complicated circulation and harbor access issues nor fantastic design flair. They ended up with deceptive mediocres pretending as subtle design.
I remember that the most of the entries were didn't seemed to care about the specific site conditions and how to deal with that at all including all of the shortlisted ones...
What I don't really understand is why Helsinki actually need another museum of Modern Art.
They have already got Kiasma Museum by Steven Hall, which is already the museum for Modern Art. This will be just a waste of taxpayers money rather than anything that ordinary people need.
Should have proposed a different program. Something economically beneficial to the city, experimental, design related. Not another art museum.
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