Polish Architects Distinguished in Helsinki
Although we won’t find out the final results of the competition until 23rd June, the international Guggenheim Helsinki Design Competition has been dubbed one of the most important architectural contests in years. The Warsaw-based studio Projekt Praga has recently been awarded with a distinction in this notable event.
The competition was announced in June 2014. The organisers are to decide on an architectural design for the Guggenheim museum to be built in Helsinki. The city of Helsinki has reserved a prominent waterfront site for the proposed museum. The site is located in the Eteläsatama, or South Harbour, area, an urban space of great national and cultural significance, close to the historic city centre and immediately visible to visitors arriving by sea. The area is surrounded by important buildings, like the 1833 City Hall and the modern headquarters of Stora Enso designed by Alvaro Aalto in 1961. But sensitivity to the historic waterfront setting is only one of the six requirements mentioned in the brief. Designers are to create an “outstanding, engaging, original design, with a potential to become a landmark and a symbol of Helsinki”. The organisers expect “a design informed by Nordic ideals, including openness and accessibility, sustainable placemaking from an economic, social, and environmental perspective and strong connections to the historic city centre, harbour, and urban context, which are evident and enjoyable in all seasons”.
From the 1715 anonymous submissions the jury selected six finalists. The list was announced on 25 April, 2015. The 11-member competition jury also awarded fifteen projects with distinctions. Among those distinguished is a project by Polish architects from the Warsaw-based Projekt Praga studio.
Projekt Praga's designed a building whose interior would penetrate the outside. Its hovering floors would open the exhibition rooms towards the street, and the area around the building would be a total of the museum’s interiors. The shape of the building was inspired with a wooden hut, which has a constant spot in Finnish culture (as huts in the forests or as small buildings with saunas inside them). The architects decided that such a form would not simply bring about pleasant connotations to the museum's visitors and the city’s residents, but it also enables keeping it in a human scale, enjoyable to people, and fitting the relatively intimate development of Helsinki. Besides the Warsaw studio a distinction was also awarded to the famous Diller Scofidio + Renfro, authors of the popular High Lane, a park established on an inoperative elevated railway in New York.
Projects by studios from the U.S., Spain, Great Britain, France, Germany and Australia have made it to the competition’s finale. The jury lead by Prof. Mark Wigley from Columbia University will announce the winner of this remarkable competition on 23 June 2015.
Find out more at: http://designguggenheimhelsinki.org/
Author: Anna Cymer, transl. Agata Dudek, 27/04/15.
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