Despite Finland’s relatively cool temperatures, climate changes have made heat waves more common in Northern Europe, and the demand for cooling buildings in summer is increasing. Instead of installing air conditioners for individual buildings, Helsinki is pioneering a vast network of underground infrastructure that pumps cold water from lakes and seas into local buildings. Beneath an unassuming park in downtown Helsinki sits a reservoir containing nearly 9 million gallons of water that is recycled and cooled by waste energy after it is used for cooling, replacing the need for air conditioning in the city and cutting carbon pollution by 80%. Read more about this undertaking in this article from Fast Co. Exist.
Take a tour inside ALA Architect’s Helsinki Central Library with a new animation and set of images revealing the project’s spacious interiors. The project, which was awarded to ALA through an international competition, boasts a unique set of programs, such as a ground floor cinema, second story sauna, “Nerd Attic” and dreamy “Book Heaven” that is topped with a cloud-like undulating roof and includes a distinctive outdoor “Citizens’ Balcony.”
As the first phase of the Guggenheim Helsinki design competition concludes, a group of independent arts organizations have launched a search for "alternative" proposals: The Next Helsinki. The counter-competition calls on architects, urbanists, landscape architects, artists, and "all others who love cities to suggest ways in which Helsinki and its South Harbor can be transformed for the maximum benefit of the city.” More information, after the break.
When you visit the galleries of GuggenheimHelsinki, you may have to bring a life vest. This submission to the Guggenheim Helsinki Design Competition floats the idea of a museum over water, traveling between the ports of St. Petersburg, Tallinn, and Helsinki. Proposed as a hypothetical submission to the worldwide contest, the team at OfficeUS delve into the notion of transience in the new world of architourism. The brief reads: "As a global freeport, the museum develops a completely new infrastructure, offering the strategic tax benefits of freeport art storage while enabling exhibitions of some of the most important pieces of modern art and design." Upcoming exhibits include (hypothetically) Olafur Elliasson, Yves Klein and Thomas Demand.
The results of the 2014 European Prize for Urban Public Space have been announced. The prize organized by the Centre of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB) rewards both the designers and the facilitators (such as councils or community groups) that have contributed to the best urban interventions of the year. The award is given for ingenuity and social impact, regardless of the scale of intervention, meaning that small, relatively unknown practices can rub shoulders with some of the best-known practices in Europe.
See the 2 Joint Winners and 4 Special Mentions after the break
The Guggenheim is planning a new museum in Helsinki. The site is in the heart of the city, next door to the late 19th Century market hall and open-air market place, two minutes from Helsinki Cathedral. The project, therefore, has great landmark potential for the city. And many Finns are lured by this very potential, wanting to increase tourism and put their capital city more evidently on the world map. There has also been discussion in the country’s main newspaper Helsingin Sanomat about how Finns should welcome a more joyous and fun architecture.
Destination-creation and architecture as entertainment are certainly strong themes of our times. They were treated with great artistry by Frank Gehry with the Bilbao Guggenheim, opened in 1997. However, it’s important to remember that the Bilbao Guggenheim might best be considered a spectacular one-off. Mayors, politicians and world leaders have since sought, in perhaps too facile a way, to rebrand their cities and countries with iconic landmarks. There has been much talk of making cities “world class” through such architectural gestures, and yet much of this marketer’s fodder is wholly out of touch with what makes great architecture great.
Courtesy of MenoMenoPiu Architects & Paolo Venturella
MenoMenoPiu Architects & Paolo Venturella just released their entry for the Alvar Aalto University Otaniemi Campus Competition in Helsinki. Their proposal focuses on the creation of an energy-efficient learning environment that rethinks the traditional courtyard typology. It uses different levels and heights to create a variety of public and private spaces open to both students and inhabitants of the city, all while framing the main Alvar Aalto building.
ALA Architects have just won the design competition for the new Helsinki Central Library with their entry “Käännös”. Located in the heart of Helsinki, the 16,000 square meter library building will consist almost entirely of public spaces and will offer a wide selection of services. It will serve as the new central point for the city’s impressive public library network and is slated to open in 2018. More images and architects' description after the break.
The Museum of Finnish Architecture’s summer exhibition, 'Light Houses.Young Nordic Architecture' is a two-part showing of contemporary work by young Nordic architects taking place now until September 22. Thirty-two architects from Finland, Sweden and Norway – all born after 1962, the year the pavilion was designed – were invited to design a sculptural piece that both complements the modernist vocabulary of Fehn’s pavilion and encapsulates their office’s philosophy of architecture in a 3D form of pre-specified dimensions. More information on the exhibition after the break.
In terms of both the cityscape and its symbolic significance, the proposal by WEAVA Architects + SWAN Architectes for the Helsinki Central Library will represent a modern and dynamic image of an urban public facility for the citizens of the city. Their ONYX concept forms seamlessly into the planned draft proposal of the Töölönlahti area, responding to the surrounding buildings, infrastructure and urban fabric. It is an iconic cultural landmark in its own right, but also respectful of its place as part of a greater master plan. More images and architects’ description after the break.
In the virtualized information era, Plan 01 believes the design for the Helsinki Central Library should be more than ever a “physical space”. The project should be a place for sensory experience, a place where culture becomes an opportunity to meet and exchange ideas, a place where the civil forum is recovered from the virtual and returned to the urban world. Their concept becomes a symbol in stone and wood that opens its heart to the city and offers visitors a retreat for body and mind. More images and architects’ description after the break.
The Helsinki Central Library, designed by FIRM a.d. and OKB Architecture, is a hub of knowledge, where different people, communities and constituencies can come together. With their concept of ‘Geologies of Information’, their design expresses how if libraries were like sedimentary rocks, where layers of knowledge accumulated over time, libraries of the 21st century are like igneous rock in which different mediums of knowledge and learning are fused into a granular heterogeneous whole. More images and architects’ description after the break.
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