Helsinki is a sea-town par excellence and an exciting, dynamic place. Half the city seems to be water, and the tortured geography of the coastline includes any number of bays, inlets and a speckling of islands.
During winter much of the country is snowy and icy; from this last element starts the concept of the project.
A universe without limits of form. Surreal, from another world. Sculptural, architectural… madly, absolutely beautiful, in which there is a tension between the huge, durable power of glaciers and their fragility, so soft and yet glassy.
The Guggenheim Museum in Helsinki has the Ice as concept. Its main structures are presented for layering and fracturing, to thrust faults, folds and cracks. Crevasses open on the slopes with vertical cavities that run along the whole thickness until the uneven snow surface, produced by the wind. The sections of the museum speak of this inner organization.
The ice is so transparent, brings its history, its knowledge imprinted inside and on the surface. A history and a culture preserved with jealousy, ready to be discovered and experienced by those who have the desire to seek it and live it.
An almost constant external immobility contrasts apparently with the dominant movement of the internal flow.
As art forms that distinguish the Guggenheim museums around the world, the new Guggenheim Helsinki is interconnected with the city and its waterfront. The central skyway runs through the building and connects the north area with the main entrance and the west area of the town, home of the Helsinki’s design culture and of the park.
The exhibition spaces of the new museum are flexible, contiguous, permeable and can be divided as needed. The external skin due to its complexity lends itself to the variability of its use.
The museum is designed as a vital center for dialogue and collaboration between artists and visitors and its structure helps the interactions. Dynamic and engaging education has been the main source of inspiration for the interior spaces of the museum.
The external volume has a sculptural form, with the expressive power of the monolithic block, but at the same
time shaped by the synthesis between the concept and the environment.
As the Finnish culture and its design, based on the almost mystical bond with nature of its inhabitants, even in
this case the perfect architectural form is close to the natural environment development: the realization of this
new space sets its laws in agreement with natural ones. In this way the museum is really a space for living the
art: it matches up everything, because the light and the form meet harmoniously.
With its form the new Guggenheim not capture only the light, but it serve it: light pervades and plasma from
inside the form. With levity it communicates with the inevitable heaviness of the structure and put it in harmony
with the works that hosts.
Guggenheim continues to be a synonym of interaction between contemporary art and architecture.
