”The city is the greatest collective work of art ever conceived and Helsinki is one of the most exquisite.  

We are seeking projects that infuse urban life with meanings that attach artistry to every aspect of the everyday.

Emanating from this spectacular waterside site, we hope to find new ideas about dissemination, participation, and collaboration, not simply the anachronism of another conventional containment vessel for yet more of the too familiar media of traditional art production.”

(Michael Sorkin, Chair of the Jury)

Helsinki is one of the world’s great cities – a beautiful and cultivated place, dancing by the water. But it is a city – like all others – with real needs.  For housing that is abundant and affordable. For an on-going retrofit for sustainability that is such an urgent part of the future of all the world’s cities. For rational transportation. For inventive platforms for experiencing and producing art. And for public spaces and a public culture that can generate decent livelihoods and be accountable to communities.

We call upon architects, urbanists, landscape architects, artists, environmentalists, students, activists, poets, politicians, and all others who love cities to suggest ways in which Helsinki and its South Harbor can be transformed for the maximum benefit of the city. We invite submissions that devise this transformation at whatever scale – and whatever medium – contributors consider appropriate: the site itself, the harbor, the city, the country.

Every city on earth, it seems, dreams of the salvation of the Bilbao effect. What if one very special building, designed by one very special architect, and sponsored by one very special private museum, could land in its midst and transform a moribund economy and under-cultured citizenry at a stroke into a teeming nexus of tourism and world class art?

Now, the Guggenheim Foundation has launched a design competition on one of Helsinki’s most valuable and compelling physical sites for a new Guggenheim building, in hopes of a transformation akin to the “miracle” in Spain. The City of Helsinki is tempted to spend hundreds of millions of municipal euros in return for the benefits of the branding of the city with someone else’s mark. – Is this really the best use for the site and tax money?

What if there was an alternative call for ideas – open to all – to rise to the challenge of imagining a richer future for the whole city? A ‘competition’ that takes as its starting points the existing structures and needs of the city itself? What if it could help Helsinki evolve as a more accessible, equitable, sustainable, and beautiful place?  What if it could help develop beneficial cultural strategies that grow from the specifics of the local scene and from the needs of contemporary art practices? What if there were realizable alternatives to the trends of luxury branding, mono-culturization, top-down decision-making processes and privatization of common goods?

Help us seize this opportunity to highlight the city’s singularity, and its residents’ appetite for social, environmental and cultural justice. We challenge you to send us your realistic, visionary and well researched ideas for the Next Helsinki!

The jury and the organizers will try to ensure that the most provocative, thoughtful, and artfully presented contributions get a full public airing in Helsinki and New York, with the goal of seeing them widely aired and realized.

Jury

Michael Sorkin, Chairperson

Ilona Anhava,Ilona Anhava, Master of Law, is the owner of Galerie Anhava, founded in 1991.

Walter Hood,Walter Hood is an Oakland, Calif.-based designer, artist and educator.

Juha Huuskonen,Juha Huuskonen is currently the Director of HIAP, Helsinki International Artist Programme.

Heta Kuchka,Visual artist Heta Kuchka was born in Helsinki in 1974 to a Finnish mother and American father. Her media are video, large-scale photography and drawing

Juhani Pallasmaa,Juhani Pallasmaa, architect, designer, educator and writer.

Miguel Robles-Durán,Miguel Robles-Durán is Director of the Program in Urban Ecologies at The New School in New York, Senior fellow at ‘Civic City’, a post-graduate design/research program based at the Haute École d'Art et de Design (HEAD) Geneva

Andrew Ross,Andrew Ross is a Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU. 

Neil Spiller,Neil Spiller is Professor of Architecture and Digital Theory, Hawksmoor Chair of Architecture and Landscape and Deputy Pro Vice Chancellor at the University of Greenwich, London

Joanna Warsza,Joanna Warsza is a researcher, writer and curator in the fields of visual and performing arts and architecture.

Mabel Wilson,Mabel O. Wilson’s extensive body of work in architecture, cultural history and art (which includes her groundbreaking book, Negro Building) focuses on how racial difference impacts the built environment.

Sharon Zukin,Sharon Zukin, professor of sociology at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, writes about cities, culture, and economic change. 

Kaarin Taipale, secretary of the jury.Kaarin Taipale is a Finnish columnist.

Submissions

1. This competition is open to presentations from anyone, because the solution is not simply an urban designer’s or artist’s task. Submissions must be anonymous, using a pseudonym.
2. The submissions can be either architectural and urban design drawings and illustrations with legend and/or short essays (maximum length 4000 characters with spaces).
3. Only digital submissions are accepted.
4. At this stage, we ask that submissions be printable in A4 format at 300 dpi to facilitate the jury process. – At a later stage, we may ask for higher resolution presentations of a number of shortlisted proposals for publication purposes.
5. Architectural and planning documents should, whenever possible, be drawn to one or more of the following familiar scales: 1:100, 1:200, 1:500, 1:1000, 1:5000, 1:10,000, 1:50,000, 1:100,000.  Please include a graphic scale on all drawings to facilitate comparison.
6. Please submit drawings that will be accessible to a broad public. Perspectives will be particularly useful as will any details you may choose to design.  Your presentation – which will be disseminated widely – should be as fully self-explanatory as you can make it.
7. To submit your proposal, upload your document (as one single pdf file) using the form below. Name the pdf document with your pseudonym. The sender’s identity will not be known to the jury until it has finalized its work.
8. Deadline for submissions is March 2, 2015 at 12 p.m (12.00) Helsinki time (GMT+2).

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