JASPER ARCHITECTS

Our design proposal for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in Helsinki attempted to create an architectural object that was both iconic on its own and as a part of the larger landscape around it. Retaking the concept of Helsinki as a “wooden city”, after its historical reliance on this material as the foremost architectural tool for its construction, we proposed a soaring structure that on the ground floor begins as a quadrilateral but as it reaches its 42-meter height, acquires a pentagonal perimeter, and this transformation being visible as a formal gesture and as a creator of the spatial sensation inside of it. Several levels are stacked in the interior of the building, while the wooden lattice creates a barrier that contains all of these levels, independent between themselves but part of a larger whole.