The new museum for Helsinki is guided by six principles that shape its design and purpose.

‍Re-duce: To reach Helsinki’s climate goals, the design avoids whatever is not fundamentally necessary. Excessive formal expression is eliminated; the building’s iconicity comes from spatial experience rather than appearance. Technical systems are minimized, favoring passive solutions such as natural ventilation, built-in shading, and thermal buffer zones. No basement is proposed, and foundations are reduced to the absolute minimum.

Re-use: Finland’s domestic material consumption is the highest in the EU, while recovery rates are among the lowest. Our project counters this by reusing materials from demolition sites around Helsinki—steel, concrete, and timber elements are salvaged, stored, and reassembled to form the museum’s spaces.

Re-pair: A public Design Repair Workshop invites citizens to bring belongings—appliances, clothes, bicycles, or furniture—to be fixed, encouraging stewardship and care rather than consumption.

Re-public: The project reclaims a parking lot as a civic square, completing Helsinki’s waterfront sequence of public buildings and extending public life indoors with free, accessible ground-floor spaces.

Re-route: Visitors move through multiple interconnected paths, looping up, down, and across the museum, turning it into a viewing machine for the city and its landscape.

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