Guggenheim: The Latest Architecture and News

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.

With one of his largest installations to date, American artist James Turrell has transformed the rotunda of Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic Guggenheim Museum into a mesmerizing Skyspace. Shifting between natural and artificial light, Aten Reign - James Turrell’s main attraction - illuminates the central void with a brightly colored, banded pattern that imitates the museum’s famous ramps. This presents a dynamic perceptual experience in which the materiality of light is exposed.

More images of the luminous and immersive Skyspace after the break. 

With his first exhibition in a New York museum since 1980, James Turrell will dramatically transform the sinuous curves of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum into one of the largest Skyspaces he has ever mounted. Opening on summer solstice, June 21, 2013, Aten Reign will give form museum’s central void by creating what Turrell has described as “an architecture of space created with light.”

With many museums worldwide seeking to extend, to accommodate larger collections, Athens-based Oiio Architecture Office have asked: “What if we decided we needed a little more of Guggenheim?”

Their solution is to stretch Frank Lloyd Wright’s original building skywards, by continuing its iconic ramp, creating an additional 13 floors.

More on the design after the break...