#Industry News
Moreau Kusunoki Architectes’ ‘Art in the City’ wins Guggenheim Helsinki Design Competition
Moreau Kusunoki Architectes was just crowned winner in the Guggenheim Helsinki Museum’s unprecedented, anonymous design competition.
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation selected the Paris-based architecture firm’s environmentally friendly proposal ‘Art in the City’ from nearly 2,000 submissions from around the world. The competition-winning design is planned for Helsinki’s South Harbor area, and it will be clad in locally sourced charred timber and glass. The museum will comprise nine low-height volumes and a lighthouse-like tower.
Guggenheim Helsinki is designed as a collection of charred-timber-clad pavilions and landscaped plazas organized around a central pedestrian street. The nine low-lying buildings will be topped by closed concave rooflines, while the tallest structure will be topped with a concave glazed volume. Natural light will flood the all ten buildings through large skylights and through the glazed floor-to-ceiling openings that wrap around the first floor of each structure.
“Moreau Kusunoki has titled its proposal ‘Art in the City,’ a name that sums up the qualities the jury admired in the design,” Wigley said. “The waterfront, park, and nearby urban area all have a dialogue with the loose cluster of pavilions, with people and activities flowing between them. The design is imbued with a sense of community and animation that matches the ambitions of the brief to honor both the people of Finland and the creation of a more responsive museum of the future.”
