The project for the new Guggenheim museum was founded mainly by the desire to define an artifact that is inserted in the urban context of Helsinki, not as a sterile imitation of what is already in that context, an operation that would be pointless and counterproductive, but as an element admittedly inserted and at the same time in line with the protagonists who occupy that urban space.
© Enrico Dalla Pietà . Published on December 07, 2014.
The project area, located near the port of Helsinki, is enclosed between the water and a great road that separates it from Tahititornin Vuori park. The proximity to the water element is balanced by the substantial presence of the background of the historic city center of Helsinki that defines the northwest boundary, concluding the project area in a strongly characterized context.
© Enrico Dalla Pietà . Published on December 07, 2014.
The proposal for the new Guggenheim museum develops from the need of wanting to insert the natural reality of a city like Helsinki within the project.
This was pursued through a research of what are the different functions of the museum itself; the analysis of the supply, in terms of services and spaces, has been instrumental in the design of volumes for the museum.
So then the large overall volume, which includes all the main areas and volumes of service, is split between those spaces who will become part of a single path within the museum exhibition and those who will contain all the secondary functions for the support to the museum itself.
© Enrico Dalla Pietà . Published on December 07, 2014.
These two realities are different and separate but at the same time functional one for the other; they are bound and held together by a long internal path which becomes the green heart of the museum, a natural element that enters with strength within the volume of the building by breaking the rigidity of the forms and forcing a confrontation and a different contact with the natural reality of its context, in particular with the Tahititornin Vuori park of which the new path is ideal continuation.
© Enrico Dalla Pietà . Published on December 07, 2014.
The two sides that contain the inner park are characterized by an organic trend, achieved by a modular structure in folded steel, which supports a system of wooden beams that become an organic background for the park that they define.
The use of wood is a key element as a reference to the natural, historic and commercial reality of Finland, more than suitable, therefore, to define a space as dynamic as that of the new inner park.
Those inner facades, with their shapes of curved beams, adapt to two different functions relating to the use of the light within the spaces of the museum and related functions.
© Enrico Dalla Pietà . Published on December 07, 2014.
Regarding the exhibition halls, the internal support of the facade will be constituted by a plastic and traslucent element, then resumed as internal finishing of the same halls, that lets only a small amount of light pass, filtered and amplified by the plastic element.
This support works as a natural and dynamics lighting for the exhibition areas, both on the ground floor and the first floor, so as to evenly illuminate the works set out therein.
In the moment in which the natural light fades, the interspace between the external finishing and the inner wall of the curve allows the insertion of a lighting system, with low power consumption, using white LED lights, will maintain unaltered the level of brightness
within the halls.
© Enrico Dalla Pietà . Published on December 07, 2014.
The additional function of the internal facade in beams of wood is relative to the secondary volume of the museum, the building that houses the common areas and
multimedia classrooms with their laboratories, interested by a series of openings in the facade that surrounds the inner park; there the vertical elements in wood will have the system function of sunbreakers to make more comfortable the light coming from inside the
park and to allow a partial view of the park itself.
So the whole second building, physically separated from the main museum, becomes a great showcase for the museum itself, and a strong advertisement for what the
new Guggenheim has to offer.
© Enrico Dalla Pietà . Published on December 07, 2014.
The other two facades of the museum are strongly linked to the context in which they are inserted.
The facade that overlooks the harbor is characterized by a covering of Corten steel panels that combine to give the museum a monolithic appearance, interrupted only by the openings related to catering services, which start with a water view, and by the projection on the north front which indicates formally the main entrance to the museum itself.
This front is part of a confrontation with the background provided by the facades of the historic center of Helsinki; a material such as the Corten steel was chosen because, with its changing over time, will follow the changing of the water in front of the facade, keeping, at the same time, the austere and imposing appearance that accompanies the background, represented by the tall buildings of the city center that surround the harbor.
© Enrico Dalla Pietà . Published on December 07, 2014.
The facade that directly confronts the city, with the urban road network and the Tahititornin Vuori park, is diametrically opposed to the previous; it has a large wood sunbreaker structure, orientable, which defines a dynamic facade that changes depending on the light and the point of view and which opens towards the city with its lights and its shadows, created by the different functions that it contains.
This facade and the building on which it’s placed are, therefore, the element of connection between the urban reality of the city and the new museum.
Regarding the sustainability of the project, the use of materials such as steel, 100% recyclable, and wood, are part of an overall will to define a building with low
environmental impact.
© Enrico Dalla Pietà . Published on December 07, 2014.
In addition to the materials chosen is expected the installation of photovoltaic panels on the whole area of the roof of the building, with the additional use of a photovoltaic film predisposed above the glass roof of the inner park.
This photovoltaic film will have both function of retrieval of solar energy and both for filtering the sun light, so as to keep the temperature comfortable in the inner park, that will also have a natural ventilation system operated through openings on its glass roof.
© Enrico Dalla Pietà . Published on December 07, 2014.
Other systems for the reduction of energy consumption will be rainwater harvesting and its reuse for the irrigation of the inner park and for the restrooms of the museum; the restrooms will also be all equipped with aerator faucets in order to optimize water
consumption.
The lighting systems will also be carried out through the use of LED lights with low consumption in order to further reduce the energy required for lighting the exhibition rooms and the ancillary rooms.
© Enrico Dalla Pietà . Published on December 07, 2014.
© Enrico Dalla Pietà . Published on December 07, 2014.
© Enrico Dalla Pietà . Published on December 07, 2014.
© Enrico Dalla Pietà . Published on December 07, 2014.
© Enrico Dalla Pietà . Published on December 07, 2014.