Published in 1/2025 - Urban Landscape
“Museum that is appropriate for the location” and a “plan full of risks” – Experts share their opinions on the shortlisted proposals for the new museum of architecture and design in Helsinki
The finalists in the international architecture competition for the new museum of architecture and design in Helsinki were published last December. The museum will be located in Makasiinranta, with its plans already developed into a draft local detailed plan based on the competition organised in 2022. We asked five architects for their opinion about the designs.
1. In your opinion, how do the planned buildings and urban spaces fit into the South Harbour waterfront setting? Is the chosen investor-led model in this case the correct approach when developing the city?
2. What are your first impressions of the shortlisted museum designs? Can they form the basis for an interesting museum building for the South Harbour?
The article features visualizations of finalists of the competition for the new museum of architecture and design in Helsinki. A total of 624 proposals were accepted in the first phase of the competition, from which the jury shortlisted five. The winner is expected to be announced in September 2025.
Karin Krokfors
1. The Makasiiniranta and Olympiaranta area part of a national landscape of European significance and a buffer zone for the Suomenlinna World Heritage Site. The area should therefore be developed with a long-term vision for centuries to come, safeguarding its unique cultural environment and the interests of the city’s inhabitants.
The majority of the floor area presented in the plans is reserved for offices and a hotel, which are not characteristically public spaces. Although the illustrations convey high-quality architecture stemming from contemporary principles, the planned functions do not guarantee the diversity and vitality of the area. If the street level is mainly occupied by activities serving offices, such as workplace restaurants, the area will become dead in the evenings. The location would allow for multiple development paths and phased construction. For instance, the opportunity is being lost for a pavilion-like series of cultural buildings similar to London’s Southbank, which has become a vibrant and attractive meeting place for the city’s inhabitants.
An investor-and-developer-driven quality and concept competition was not the best way to find ideas and tools for developing such a significant locality. Due to the competition format, architects have been tied to the short-term profit goals of developers and investors rather than brainstorming more freely and for the long term. As a comparison one can look, for example, at Copenhagen, where all major planning projects are based on open international architectural competitions. In Helsinki, the balanced relationship between public control and private resources is breaking down, as can be seen in many key projects.
2. The international architectural competition for the new museum of architecture and design is still ongoing and the proposals selected for Stage 2 are being developed, so only very preliminary observations can be made about them. The frontage of the existing buildings forms an iconic “facade” for the urban fabric of Helsinki, and it is more natural for the buildings in front of it to be pavilion-like. Four of the proposals selected for Stage 2 follow this urban typology and are therefore better suited to the site than the fifth proposal (“Moby”), which is a tall museum building.
The location of the museum is challenging, as the maintenance is quite visible from the street level and the building easily creates a disparate facade in relation to the surrounding city. Placing the museum closer to the Olympic Terminal would have allowed maintenance traffic to be hidden below the deck accessed from Ehrenströmintie. Hopefully, the proposals will also be developed in Stage 2 in such a way that they have an open, visible and inviting character in the cityscape.
KARIN KROKFORS is the Associate Professor of Urban Design Practices at Aalto University.
Matti Sanaksenaho
1. I think the Makasiiniranta and Olympiaranta plan fits well into Helsinki’s maritime cityscape. The plan will create cohesive blocks, streets, alleys and small squares, elements that make up a good city. The facades, which are mainly clad in glass, make good use of the exceptionally beautiful views of the location. The abundant vegetation and roof terraces promise a pleasant environment. The only downside is the absence of housing. Housing creates the foundation for the city and a vibrant environment at all times of the day. I don’t know if the investor-driven model is the right way to develop a city, but at least in this case it seems to lead to a decent end result.
2. My first impression of the finalists of the competition is cautiously positive. The proposals are moderate and their heights respect the exceptionally valuable building location. The surrounding beautiful city has led to the caution and, to some extent, also to the conventionality of the proposals. It seems that the shortlisted proposals are white boxes of different designs. The result of the competition should be a museum that is self-assured and appropriate for the location. No unprecedented, exceptional, iconic landmark building is going to emerge from the finalists, but I hope I’m wrong.
MATTI SANAKSENAHO is the Professor of Contemporary Architecture at the University of Oulu.
Henrik Ilvesmäki
1. The plan for the South Harbour reflects the parameters set by the environment and the investor-driven starting point. Viewed from the sea, the buildings form a uniform, layered pedestal for Tähtitorninvuori Park. Thanks to the hexagonal ground print, it’s not possible to see between the buildings from the sea, and the whole appears deeper than it really is. The shape of the ground print directs pedestrians towards the squares between the buildings, connecting the waterfront promenade to the street space behind the buildings. The design is commendable, and a high-quality impression is also sought through what appears to be untreated facade materials – a material fundamentalism. The design’s starting points and implementation are nevertheless reactive. When quantitative incentives dominate investor-driven projects in a limited Finnish market, architecture becomes a problem-solving activity similar to engineering: the volumes are as large as the ground print allows, thus maximizing the efficiency of the plot. The potential of architectural design and the opportunities of quality-driven projects as economic assets remain untapped. However, this cannot be blamed on architects in individual projects, because in order to change the situation there is a need to develop systematic incentive structures in either the construction industry or the market.
2. The proposals and finalists for the museum of architecture and design demonstrate the constraints of the assignment, such as the small size of the plot. Due to the requirements, the volumes of the different designs have turned out rather similar. The selected finalists represent the archetypes of modern museum buildings, and the choices have been justified by their adaptation to the surrounding urban fabric. Spaces coded as mere museums appear clichéd next to many modern curation solutions. One wishes that the finalists would develop their archetypes further, so that the museum justifies its existence. The project should create a building in Helsinki that, by Finnish standards, enables new kinds of museum experiences.
HENRIK ILVESMÄKI graduated as an architect from Aalto University and has since completed post-professional master’s degrees in architecture and design thinking at Harvard University. He is currently heading the architecture and consulting agency Studio Ilvesmäki.
Anni Vartola
1. A new, vibrant and socially sustainable urban environment will only be created if the three power vectors of urban design vision, political long-termism, and investors’ willingness to invest are in balance. The new waterfront promenade, the diversity of the street spaces created by the new buildings, and the aesthetic restraint and respect for Helsinki’s maritime landscape in the design principles all show promise.
The results-oriented real estate business, however, has been cut too much slack, because in the planning of the waterfront they have congested it as much as they dared get away with: not even the new museum of architecture and design has been given open space around it that would emphasise the value of a significant cultural building. In addition, spineless political guidance has allowed the plan to be loaded full of risks. How resilient is the pleasantness and liveliness of the hotel and office blocks, even if they are flanked by no less than two museums? What kind of operators have the economic conditions to locate to inevitably the most expensive commercial premises in Helsinki? What are the knock-on effects on urban life on Esplanadi, Aleksanterinkatu or Senaatintori, or on the desirability of commercial premises elsewhere in the city centre? What kind of lifestyle will be showcased on Helsinki’s new catwalk, and for whom? The draft plan can only be considered successful if it is also able to take a credible stand on the questions that define the purpose and significance of a shared public space.
2. When one considers the enormous amount of work that has gone into the project planning of the new museum, the preparation of the almost hundred-page competition brief, and the screening of five finalists from among 624 entries, examining the proposals that have been selected brings about a severe feeling of second-hand embarrassment. At what point was the public image of architectural design allowed to turn into a building fashion show? When did the description of architectural solutions turn into a collection of vaguely arty images and a drivel of self-evident platitudes? When did formalism cease being a swear word? All five trendy finalists envisioned how they would give the magnificent museum fine, appealing and impressive external envelopes. The publicly available material on the proposals does not give, however, even the slightest hint as to whether they have anything new to offer to museum architecture, which is currently in a state of intense transition, or how the architecture of the proposals in practice intends to concretize a cultural institution that is dynamic, inviting and open to all and that cherishes and continues the story of our country’s design and architectural heritage in unprecedentedly innovative and enigmatic ways. Magnificent monuments, each one of them, but full of emptiness.
ANNI VARTOLA works as an University Lecturer at Aalto University.
Leonard Ma
1. The investor-led model is, of course, quite unique in Helsinki and has only been used in the case of exceptional developments. Success or failure will be found in the details of the transaction, but the size and prominence of these projects means they are often too big to fail. Here and abroad, there have been many examples where investors have pocketed profits, only to abandon projects at the first sign of trouble, leaving the fallout on the public purse. Still, there are few alternatives, as governments have little appetite for debt and even less for raising taxes to finance large development projects. Satisfying answers to this model would require nuance and political decision making at levels higher than the urban plan itself. There was, however, an admirable variety in the entries to the Makasiiniranta competition, where it felt almost as though there was an early consensus for the competing teams to adopt differing approaches. It is clear that for the jury, view corridors must be preserved, that the space between buildings is paramount, and that the new development must be subservient to the existing context, even if the resulting jewel-shaped blocks are awkward to the eyes.
2. The availability of online public presentation and commenting means competitions increasingly carry an air of authority that feels like democratic edict. When winners are chosen, it is like the result of an election where one’s preferred candidate never wins. It’s important to remind ourselves that such selection processes are inevitably subjective, they do not carry the burden of legislative procedure or accountability – that they are as much about common sense as the presumptions and individual biases of the jury. In the case of the shortlisted entries for the new museum of architecture and design, urban integration remains key, and the dogma continues to be coherence. For a future museum of architecture and design in a country that has contributed so significantly to architecture in the 20th century, it is the final victory of the urban over architecture. Whether there is some greater vision for what the museum might be cannot be seen without the complete plans, but it is concerning that the public narrative is now solely focused on the appropriateness of one shape over another. At best, it seems, this can only hope to inspire indifference. ↙
LEONARD MA is a Canadian architect based in Helsinki. He is currently writing a review on the Museum of Architecture and Design Helsinki for the Nordic Review of Architecture.