Guggenheim Helsinki

Design Competition proposal

+ Malcolm Reading

A rounded footprint shapes a building with only front facades, no back sides, which will help to firmly anchor the new museum in its context. It is organized so that covered terraces for entrances, restaurant and art activities open up and activate all sides. This configuration supports the idea of the museum project as a new meeting point.

The building concept treat interior and outdoor spaces as an inter-locked, integral and continuous whole offering intermediate places around the museum in a scale between the city and the art spaces inside.
A clear spatial organisation is visible already in the exterior massing and sustained throughout the museum interior: the four lower wings hold the most public and flexible functions while the upper four wings hold the main exhibition galleries.
From the Entrance Hall a generous flight of stairs invites the visitors to a vertical promenade up through the building.