INFO

PROGRAM: Museum
TEAM: Mikołaj Zajda, Marcin Adamczyk, Yücel Dönmez, Mélina Regent

LEADER: Guillermo Reynes, Jaime Olliver

LOCATION: Helsinki, Finland

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

MUSEUM ROCKS!

Museum Rocks as the new Guggenheim museum in Helsinki. The ambition of a museum these days has to go beyond the art container, beyond the architect’s signature building, beyond the sustainable manifesto. It should be understood as a key element of the urban planning of the city, a fundamental element of the city for its citizens. The museum is proposed as public space for the city. The limits between the museum, the city and the natural surroundings are blurred celebrating its publicness.

Museum rocks does not bring the art to the city: it brings the city, its citizens, its culture, its nature, its way of life to be part of the museum.The first ideas behind the proposal come from the very special natural conditions of the city and specially the plot: a pier by the sea. Museum rocks wants to bring both, the nature that surrounds the plot and the city itself into the building.The islands of the bay “land” on the shore and become the museum “rocks”, a sort of rip-rap by the shore that brings nature to the buil-ding. This clear relation with the natural conditions (islands) and the sea is exten-ded to the hill and forest behind: the trees are to be continued by a mesh-roof that intersects with the rocks and creates a shelter, canopy for the museum: it brings the nature to the building and makes a clear transition between interior and ex-terior.

The combination of this strategies, the rocks and the canopy make the building itself. It is born from the nature that surrounds the plot. The city grid interferes in this natural born building bringing the key urban elements to the scheme: a clear axis coming from the north makes the connection to the city and also provides the main entrance in between 2 rocks. This axis continues and reaches the terminal crossing the big atrium: a space consequence of the intersection of the canopy and the rocks, the heart of the museum. Other important entrances are provided in between the rocks opening the atrium to the city and to the sea. The program is organised inside the different boxes around the central atrium. Exhibition spaces are in the upper boxes. The central atrium is the clear element of the Project: an urban space inside the museum, a space for all the city not just for the museum. It is a space for art installations and also a gathering space for the city. The exhibition spaces are arranged in the upper boxes so that visitors can access the shows one by one or all continuously through the bridges that connect all exhibition spaces.