LOCATION
Helsinki, Finland

STATUS
Unbuilt

AREA
Total Gross Floor Area: 10,020 SQ M
Total Net Floor Area: 6,205 SQ M

DESIGN TEAM
Daniel Kaven, Partner-in-Charge
Trevor William Lewis, Partner
Mike Perso, Director of Architecture
Joel Dickson, Project Designer
Kendra Shippy, Project Designer
Jeff Dunn, Project Designer

CATEGORIES
Museum, Public Space

HELSINKI NEW MUSEUM
OF ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN
Helsinki, Finland

Our proposal for Helsinki’s New Museum of Architecture and Design reimagines the role of the museum in the life of the city, transforming it from a cloistered repository into an open, permeable civic experience. Departing from traditional notions of museums as sealed environments preserving art behind opaque walls, our design envisions a luminous glass atrium that dissolves the boundary between institution and public life. Here, the exhibitions are visible not only to visitors within, but to anyone strolling through the outdoor plaza, along Laivasillankatu, or from the vibrant waterfront promenade below.

Upon entering the building, visitors ascend through a series of interlocking, horizontal exhibition bars that weave around a grand social stair — a dynamic vertical promenade that fosters chance encounters, conversation, and community engagement. Exhibition spaces are deliberately integrated with circulation zones along the edges of the atrium, allowing for layered curatorial possibilities: areas of porous, informal display adjacent to more secure, curated environments for sensitive or precious works. The atrium’s soaring volume also enables full-height installations—reaching upwards of 18 meters—to be suspended from the ceiling, creating a powerful visual connection between interior and exterior and offering glimpses of the museum’s vitality to the broader city.

Fundamental to our concept is an ethos of openness and invitation. A continuous stone flooring treatment blurs the transition between the interior and the surrounding plaza, dissolving the threshold and signaling that the museum is not an exclusive domain, but a shared civic commons. This gesture extends the museum’s cultural field into the public realm, asserting that architecture and design belong to everyone. Urbanistically, the building engages the waterfront district with generosity and restraint. Landscaped mounds, built-in bench seating, and groves of trees animate the exterior plaza, inviting rest, play, and interaction among passersby. The massing of the museum carefully steps down in deference to the adjacent buildings to the west and north, generating a lively cultural presence without overwhelming the existing urban fabric. The result is a porous, social museum: a democratic platform for the exchange of ideas, seamlessly integrated into the evolving life of the city.

ECOLOGICAL, SOCIAL & ECONOMIC SUSTAINABILITY

We believe that the most sustainable thing an architect can do is to design a building which becomes so integrated into the social and cultural life of a place that it lasts. Along with efficient systems, shading, passive cooling and other means, we aim to create a place that is socially sustainable, attracting visitors who arrive in cars, buses, streetcars, boats and bicycles to enjoy art exhibitions, concerts, and theatrical performances both within the formal exhibition spaces but also on the bridge levels surrounding the atrium and outside in the plaza.

A glowing beacon in the wintertime, changing with the seasons and sustaining city life throughout the year.