_visual: Liraat

Helsinky Museum 2024

The museum as urban space

The idea is to consider the museum as an urban space; a vertical square organized on terraces overlooking the city. A continuous path connects the Market Square, the multi-level foyer and the waterfront. In this way, the museum itself becomes a piace to stroll through or linger during leisure time, observing the city of Helsinki.

The value of this museum is not its iconic permanence but its dynamic transformability. lts dimension is theatrical, a theater of the city that stages the secular ritual of gathering, celebrating culture as a space of relations. The vertical space is a real, constructed and visible space even in the absence of its actors, a co-protagonist space always ready to be occupied. By reclaiming the architectural value of public space, the project offers itself as a stable but available space, defined but dynamic, open but not mimetic, in line with the urban space that surrounds it.

The architectural themes of movement (ramps, escalators, funicular) are constant and create a sort of artifi­cial landscape. These rhythmic spaces are ideai places tor performances, three-dimensional scenes where there is a blurring between the architecture of the city and the architecture and design on display.

The building is characterized by an opaque presence: the closed exhibition space and a transparent one overlooking the city - the vertical foyer hosting the public program.

The idea is that visitors can become part of the museum event as both spectators and active partici pants with a common interest. Architecture and design branch out into the space, seeking to define its contents in their most exhaustive and truthful completeness. Like wandering along a street and entering shops, visitors encounter the entrances to the exhibition halls and enter to visit an exhibit, stop in the library, attend a conference, or simply stroll while observing the architecture of the city.