Helsinki Advances on New Museum of Architecture and Design

If the above photograph, ostensibly the site of the planned Finnish Museum of Architecture and Design, looks familiar, that is because the waterfront location closely matches the site of the Guggenheim Helsinki, which the Helsinki City Council rejected in 2016, a year a design competition was won by Paris's Moreau Kusonoki Architectes. That high-profile competition garnered more than 1,500 entries, making it more than successful, but the council opposed the nearly €100m the city would have been required to pay for a private institution. 

While the money approved by the local government and matched by the national government is greater, totaling €120m, the planned architecture and design museum will be public, “operated by an entity that has been established through a merger of the Museum of Finnish Architecture and the Design Museum Helsinki,” per a press release from the Foundation for the Finnish Museum of Architecture and Design. An additional €30m is expected to be raised from private donations, the whole enabling a design competition to launch in April.

The competition is being organized by Real Estate Company ADM (an entity owned by the City of Helsinki and the Finnish state), with the Foundation for the Finnish Museum of Architecture and Design, and in cooperation with the Finnish Association of Architects SAFA and the City of Helsinki. Although the competition program will be published on the ADM website on April 11, the results of the two-stage competition will not be announced until August 2025. Currently, the parties involved are aiming for an opening of the new Finnish Museum of Architecture and Design in 2030.