Mannerheimintie, Helsinki, Finland
Steven Holl Associates
1998
Greetings from Helsinki!
This picturesque capital of Finland is a sprawling gulfside city noted for its 20th and 21st century architecture. Especially notable are buildings designed by native sons Alvar Aalto and Elliel Saarinen. Since 1998, New York-based Steven Holl Architects has been represented by a bold and contextual landmark, the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art. Its design was selected in an international competition of 515 proposals.
The 130,000 sq. ft. structure (with 40,000 sq. ft. devoted to exhibition space for the museum’s large collection and changing programs) is situated in a prominent site on Mannerheimintie, a sweeping boulevard (think a more organic National Mall in Washington D.C.). The street is also lined by the House of Parliament, Aalto’s Finlandia Hall music and convention center, the National Museum, the breath-taking new Oodi Helsinki Central Library designed by ALA Architects (expect another postcard regarding the latter).
Holl’s museum is an aluminum, zinc, and brass shed-like complex whose exterior recalls a giant, sinewy quonset hut or perhaps a sandworm from “Dune.” Entering at the ground level, visitors soon find themselves at a far end of a startlingly grand concourse with an extended ramp that leads to the upper gallery levels. All interior surfaces are icebox white, their brilliance only heightened by Nordic daylight channeled through skylights.
The generously-sized upper galleries yet humanely-scaled. The procession of these spaces is broken at irregular intervals by transitional spaces and stairhalls that have large, solid pane windows framing some of the dramatic public buildings nearby.
It should give Virginians pride that the Steven Holl-designed Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, opened in 2018, although a smaller arts center, is an equally fine example of the firm’s more recent work. And just as it is at the busy intersection of Broad and Belvidere streets, the word Kiasma is derived from the Greek for crossing.
But while Richmond has removed from public view in recent years most of its statuary relating to Confederate figures of the American Civil War, one of the most controversial leaders in Finnish history, Carl Gustaf Mannerheim (1867-1951), a military leader and the sixth president of the nation, is depicted in monumental equestrian glory just steps from the front door of the Kiasma.
Edwin Slipek with Chris Snowden, photographer
Note: if you are interested in learning more about Steven Holl’s work, and his design for the VCU ICA, see our interview with him here.
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