I AM THE GUGGENHEIM | Architecture Competition Entry Guggenheim Helsinki | BEIRUT | 2014
In 2010 the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation was invited by the City of Helsinki to undertake a detailed concept and development study exploring the possibility of a Guggenheim museum in the Finnish capital. Conducted during 2011, presented in 2012, and revised in 2013, the study proposed an innovative, multidisciplinary museum of art and design, thoughtfully integrated in a prominent site on Helsinki’s South Harbor, which was reserved by the City of Helsinki in January of 2014 for an architectural competition to design the proposed museum.
‘I am the Guggenheim’ is a mission that puts the individual at the center of the museum’s architecture to create unusual relationships between time and space. The idea of Helsinki is radical, an ideal city built from language, voice and image. The desire for a new Guggenheim experience lies where spatial contrasts merge in the midst of an incorporeal city. Our intention is to develop an approach that allows the space to fabricate itself continuously by exploiting notions of interaction and data collected from the visitor.
By taking into account the obsolescence of new interactive technologies, we create an open infrastructure that allows for the museum to be flexible in order to accommodate for artistic and technological innovation within a system of plugged-in programs of museum, theatre, education and various production functions. The building is an organism of connections with the capacity to create forms of social interaction, knowledge and pure entertainment that are non-reducible to past uses or aesthetic commands.
The Guggenheim is envisioned as a cultural think tank in Helsinki with an interface that is non-cultural: the everyday human interaction and the city. So where does the museum begin and where does it end? By taking the public space and delivering it in a different way, we make an exchange that threads the public into the museum, using all the surfaces for defining the play of the institution with its environment and immediate context. We bring park culture, port culture, city culture and museum culture together.
Place: Helsinki
Type: Museum
Area: 11358
Year: 2014
Credits:
Architects: FaR Architects x Roula Gholmieh
Design team: Karine Fakhry, Roula Gholmieh
3D renderings: Carl Gerges