Guggenheim Helsinki
RAFI SEGAL ARCHITECTURE & URBANISM
International Competition
Helsinki, Finland | 12,000 sq. m.
Project Director: Rafi Segal
2014 New York, USA
The urbanism of Helsinki, as much as the museum’s program, plays a defining role in shaping the new Guggenheim located in Eteläsatama. Capturing the activity of the city’s south harbor, the project creates a series of terraces and courtyards, cut-out of the building’s mass, which extend the urban public space of the waterfront onto the higher ground of Tahititornin Vuori Park. The ascending movement of these terraces is echoed in the interior organization of the museum which is conceived as an architectural promenade of exhibition spaces and urban vistas. Tourists and residents, art and community meet through the new museum building and within it. The icon of cultural activity seen from afar becomes, at close, an urban landscape of courtyards and passages which enhances the experience of the city and its fellowship with the elements
of nature.