Dot Dot Dot, Dot

A museum for the city

The project tries to balance two different formal desires. One is the desire to create a linear building along the Aura River that extends the promenade into the Linnanniemi area and spreads its mass along its length to maximize its view to and from the sea. The other is to make this linearity out of fragments to break its scale and singularity into multiple views, orientations and access points and make it a collective icon for its most unique geographical context: The Archipelago Sea.

In a simple gesture, the project becomes a linear cluster of two-and-a-half-story architectural volumes that are open on the ground level to the city and mostly enclosed on the second levels and the mezzanine to create the right curatorial environment for the galleries and exhibitions. The spatial experience of the second level and above will be akin to going through an occupiable mass timber roof structure with an alternating series of dark galleries and bright double-height threshold spaces. The mass timber structure relates to the rich tradition of wood in Finnish architecture and the history of warehouse buildings on the once-active shipping seaport.

These warm spaces overlaid by a host of digitally augmented projections of Turku’s past and future become the right environment for the simultaneous experience of past and future where neither of them has precedence over the other, and their lines of distinction are blurred meaningfully.

Two generous main entries, one from the water side and one from the city side, enter the building from the middle and into the main lobby (the lower level of the second volume); this form of entry guarantees that the two streams of visitors will merge in the middle to create a vibrant and accessible public space for the city that can also become a shortcut path through the building. From this central hub, one path to the west takes the visitors to the galleries via the elevators and the grand staircase, and one path to the east will lead the visitors to the auditorium, café, and restaurant. This merging and diverging guarantees the vibrancy of the lobby while allowing for different degrees of separation between ticketed and non-ticketed routes.

The last volume of the series (the closest one to the park) is tilted slightly to face Turku Castle. It registers the relationship of the building to this national monument while also housing the restaurant on the waterside and the art handling back of the house with access from a slight difference in the programs housed in this volume.

Structure and Materiality

The proposed structure will be a hybrid mass timber skeleton frame system placed on top of a concrete matt foundation with structural service cores extending on the upper levels for lateral stability. Linear timber elements will be Glulam members, and the planar ones will be CLT decking on the floors. By placing the structural nodes away from the periphery, the building can have multiple vibrant glazed faces on the ground, creating visual and physical connections to its multiple sides to the city. The second level and the mezzanine will be clad in rain-screen sheets of aged copper both to be light on the woodframe structure and a register of its connection to the castle and its occupiable roof space.

A Resilient and Sustainable Public Space for the city

Turku is celebrated as a green city and the birthplace of the country’s gardening culture. The landscape for the Turku Museum is an unprogrammed open space designed to accommodate a variety of activities and events. The semipermeable paved plaza provides the ground with numerous soft pockets for drainage and a hard surface for accessibility. Each circle serves as a drainage zone with a gradual 2% slope towards a rain garden at its center, where resilient native wild perennials (such as Aster finnicus, Achillea millefolium, Thalictrum, etc.) remediate the water and gradually discharge it back into the Aura Riverc. These small gardens, along with the potential larger scheme of the future landscape proposal, will increase biodiversity, offer seasonality, promote pollination, and impart a unique character to this new public space.

Turku’s landscape seamlessly integrates ecological sustainability with functional design, resulting in a vibrant and resilient public space that honours Turku’s green heritage. Through meticulous planning, considerate planting, and a forward-thinking approach to climate, it aims to contribute to the city’s legacy as a pioneer in urban greenery. In the end, the project tries to create an icon through careful commitment to the existing realities of local history and global future through a hybrid language that is merely responding to the framework of a competition and its sustainable goals to create an icon in the tradition of great Finnish architecture that has managed to contribute to a global discourse while maintaining a local sensibility.