Winy Maas at the Wickberg Lectures 2014 at Dipoli, Espoo.

The Helsinki Guggenheim competition is insane!”, wailed Winy Maas when showing his calculations of jury duty with 1,715 entries and an exceptionally tight schedule. Maas, the director and founding partner of the epic MVRDV office, made his keynote speech at the 10th Nils Erik Wickberg Lectures at Dipoli, Espoo. Addressing a full house, he roused the audience with a direct question: how much value are we putting on new art and architecture?

The provocative question framed the fundamental proposition set by professor Trevor Harris, chair of this year’s event. Do we need more fantasies, do we need more and more design and art, or should we finally counteract the status quo and reorientate the whole industry by inventing its future anew?

It is my conviction that the current state of development within the Creative Arts is in dire need of a serious and long overdue rethink about the directions we have been engaged in recently. The current state of the planet requires that we need to urgently address the very nature of our creative output(…) Nothing is easier than ignoring reality, especially when it hurts.
— Trevor Harris, chair of Wickberg Lectures 2014....Continue Reading

> via finnisharchitecture.fi