In collaboration with André Adónis
Guggenheim Helsinki will feature as a machine for the production of exhibitions and performances: the museum is a stage with a void as its heart.
The increasing complexity of the museum’s logistics poses a great challenge to a building that wishes to remain public. A large production apparatus, responsible for organizing and creating exhibitions, performances and art events, remains in the backstage. Can the museum reveal this hidden realm, and reconcile production and performance as an integrated experience?
The new Guggenheim is assembled in a square of 75×75 meters with a voided floor in the middle. This void is a civic stage, an unobstructed platform that can mutate in order to accommodate a range of events from exhibitions to concerts or performances. Underneath this stage and floating above it, just like the back of house of a theatre, there are technical areas, curatorial offices and exhibition galleries, that through operable walls and movable platforms, can invade the civic stage and be part of the exhibition performance.
program: museum architecture: João Fagulha, João Ruivo, Raquel Oliveira, André Adónis sustainability consultants: i+i consulting – Isabel Silvestre, Ignacio Medina client: The Guggenheim Foundation area: 15.000 m2 year: 2014 location: Helsinki, Finland status: competition