The eight Next Helsinki shortlisted entries

By Bustler Editors|

Tuesday, Apr 21, 2015

Aside the large reponse to the Guggenheim Helsinki competition, the ongoing debate behind the proposed museum adds to the project's popularity. In direct response to the controversy, Checkpoint Helsinki, Terreform and G.U.L.F. (Global Ultra Luxury Faction) co-organized The Next Helsinki ideas counter-competition to bring this side of the discussion back into the international spotlight.

Out of 217 submissions from 40 countries, according to architect and jury chair Michael Sorkin, the jury shortlisted eight entries that they believed had the most outstanding concepts. However, these "winning" ideas aren't necessarily refined and final proposals.

“We initiated this project out of a sense of both outrage and love. Outrage at the march of the homogenizing multi-national brand culture emblematized by the imperial Guggeheim franchise – the cultural equivalent of Starbucks – was what launched us," Sorkin said in a statement. "The feeling of love came from our mutual affection for Helsinki, from a sense that it is a singular place, unique in setting, form, and culture. Understanding the impetus to acquire a Guggenheim as a pursuit of the vaunted Bilbao effect, the idea that some gaudy global repository would put a tired place on the map, we wondered why a city so indelibly fixed in the urban firmament, so superb, would want to surrender such a fabulous site to some starchitect supermarket."

Have a look at the shortlisted entries below. (Entries are marked with their submission numbers.)

#14 Parc art Helsinki by Pedro Carrasco Zanini Sánchez and Lucía Gutierrez Vazquez