Guggenheim Helsinki

Our Guggenheim Helsinki museum proposal creates a new relationship between art and the city. Hovering over the ground, our museum creates a new urban space and art park with a multitude of public spaces at the edge of the Gulf of Finland. The building postures itself at the end of Eteläinen Makasiinkatu and frames a view to the harbor. As an iconic figure, the museum changes as one views it from the city, the park, the street, or the water. An inner street that ends in a courtyard and covered plaza parallels a renewed pedestrian path along the water’s edge, providing connections to the city while a new pedestrian bridge connects to the park beyond. The Northern face of the building cantilevers over the city, creating an iconic entry to invite visitors towards the inner courtyard & museum lobby. Part landscape and part urbanscape, an activated urban frontage recreates the water’s edge and reconnects the City to the water. Public amenities – including cafes, a design store, a black box theater, and an outdoor amphitheater – are interspersed throughout the outdoor exhibits in the art park and create a new living room for the museum and the city at the edge of the South Harbor. Mediating between the scale of the harbor and the scale of the city, the Helsinki Guggenheim creates an unexpected waterfront place that will be a new nexus for the city.