GH-51188079Board 1City Lighthouse
A New Monument For The City
A bold new city figure, recognisable and distinctive, with a strong material presence, the gallery is poised at a fulcrum point in the bay, unlocking the South Harbour area.
The scale is drawn from the epic quality of the site, where forest meets sea and the ships are higher than the hills.
The lively juxtaposition of harbor, market, cruise ship, and park is amplified with a new set of intensely public spaces - city rooms for debate, reflection, and critique. The quayside becomes a series of public rooms, each with a distinctive character - harbor yard, a wooded park and the grand hall. This porous, animated public realm invites exploration into the gallery. The rooftop is a little piece of city - animated and public, with the theatre space looking back over Helsinki, a beacon during dark nights.
Resonant, archaic, and contradictory, the building challenges settled notions of collective memory.
Plan 1:2000The quayside is a series of public rooms, each with distinctive character - wooded sculpture park, grand hall, harbour yard
Grand hall
Harbour yard
wooded sculpture park
Future harbour Term
inal
Section BB 1:2000
BB
CC
AA
Elevation AA 1:2000
The forest meets the sea
Cityplan 1 : 10.000 A new city figure
GH-51188079Board 2A Big House for the City
3rd floor
Plan 1:500
4rd floor
Plan 1:500
1st floor, Plan 1:500
House for the City, inviting visitors
2nd floor
Plan 1:500
5th floor
Plan 1:500
Like a fine Castle, the character of the rooms are specific to their location, and draw on memory and typology – ascending as court, grand halls, intimate suites, roof garrets.
They provide a varied set of conditions, forming a typology of art spaces, from highly conditioned white cubes to flexible performance spaces, fluid workspaces and a grand hall for charged collective events. These art spaces are energised by proximity and adjacency, provoking encounter and surprise. The external ramp makes an alternative entrance, giving a direct unmediated encounter with art.
A series of large fully conditioned galleries allow subdivision or combination to host large scale ambitious shows.
Generous circulation allows the informal encounter, discussion and reflection essential to a vivid experience of art. Different on each floor, with windows and loggias to sea and city, these social spaces allow opportunities to enjoy the extreme changes in light and sun path.
A deep open floor plate provides flexibility for ambitious programming, in a fluid workspace environment, where the boundaries of art practice can be tested - challenging the rigid distinctions between artist, curator, staff, and visitor.
High up is is a sociable city floor - with café, restaurant and loggias, and a galleried performance space looking out over the city.
Central CourtGround floor, Plan 1:500
Void
Void
Project Space
Shop
Cafe
Void
Void
Void
Florence Baptistry – Illustration from Villani’s Nuova Cronica
South Elevation 1:500
Proscenium
Flat Floor
Courtyard
Gallery
North Elevation 1:500
Various inhabitations of Performance Space, Plans 1:500
A highly flexible gallery/ theatre, easy to adapt for a diverse range of performance art. Retractable raked seating and galleries in the round cater for all configurations including conference events.
Architects
Adam Khan Architects4 Northington StreetLondon WC1N 2JGUnited Kingdon
020 7403 9897www.adamkhan.co.uk
Adam Khan Architects
Description
Date Scale
Drawing name
Project name
000/0000Issued for
00/00/00 1:5@A1
Do not scale from this drawingAll dimensions to be verified on site
00/00/00 Revision a
GH-51188079Board 3A Rich Skin
The strongly sculpted mass is dressed in a fine coat of stone – white marble alternating with a shimmering collection of granites in rich dark colours.
Reflected in the water, and lit up by raking low sun, the material surface and pattern make for a dense, optically rich set of experiences, which change with distance.
Natural MaterialsThe exterior is of Finnish granite which is local, sustainable, extremely durable and ages well. Granite from Finland could be combined with a wide collection of stones brought from across the world, making a collectors cabinet. Cross laminated timber would be used for both structure and internal linings
Life CycleEnvisioning a long life for the building, using a robust permanent shell, with flexible internal layouts and services. The outer stone skin will withstand the exposed maritime location and offer a long life. Use of cross-laminated timber for the entire structure would be investigated. A fabric-first, passive environmental strategy would be used generally. The building geometry and compact shape gives a low ratio of surface envelope to internal volume, minimizing heat loss. The galleries requiring full environmental control would employ a highly tuned combination of active and passive systems, such as night cooling and stack ventilation, and so reduce energy consumption.
A collection of rooms of varied ch aracter
Ground Floor – Central Court, café, cloaks, shop and service areas
1st Floor – Large gallery rooms for ambitious art shows. Generous social spaces facing the sea. Direct entry from over scaled ramp
2nd Floor – Suite of flexible gallery rooms, with viewing gallery into the grand hall
3rd Floor – Fluid workspace environment
– for artists, curators, staff, and visitors
4th Floor – Café, restaurant, loggias, and flexible performance space looking out over the city
5th Floor – Public roofscape - café, project space, and shop sharing sheltered terraces overlooking sea and city
6th Floor – Plant room
East Elevation 1:500 Public Roofscape – terraces overlooking the sea and the city
Environmentally controlled gallery rooms Section CC 1:250
A house is imagined as a vertical being. It rises upward. It differentiates itself in terms of verticality. It is one of the appeals to our consciousness of verticality. A house is imagined as a concentrated being. It appeals to our consciousness of centrality
Gaston Bachelard The Poetics Of Space 1958
GH-51188079Board 4
5th floor
“City on the Roof”
4th Floor
3rd Floor
2nd Floor
1st Floor
Ground Floor
Open circulation.
Public roof terrace.
Exhibition galleries.
Multi-purpose zone.
Flexible performance hall and support spaces.
Multifunction classroom/laboratory
Retail.
Stock room and office
Restaurant and Cafe.
Visitor services.
Toilets.
Enclosed circulation.
Offices.
Maintenance and operations
Collections store and management
Heliotropic
The building offers panoramic views and multiple places to enjoy the sun throughout the year – windows, loggias terraces
Logistics
The lorry route to the port is used to service the building, with separate entrances for art store, shop, and kitchen, all safely away from conflict with the pedestrian public realm. The building presents a clean exterior - with loading bays taken within the volume.
The ramp is a gathering space, a grand entry and even allows heavy loads to enter the gallery spaces. It helps to define the pedestrian public realm from the vehicle access and disabled parking to the west.
Juxtaposition of working spaces, Plan 1:1000 View from Tahititorninvuori Park – The forest meets the sea
Working Space
The gallery would innovate and lead on sustainability, building on the established principles of fabric first and passive environmental design, to fine tune the use of conditioned spaces and investigate the use of cross-laminated timber – ambitious for such a large public gallery. The principle of a strong shell with exposed services gives long future flexibility. A tough outer coat of Finnish granite is both sustainable and robust.
Education activity is everywhere – in galleries, breakouts, studios and the fluid workspace. Smart media allows interpretation to be both reticent and super-personal.
Harbour yard
Wooded Sculpture Park
Tahititorninvuori Park
Outdoor Cafe
Lorry Route
Bike Route
Pedestrian Bridge from park
A Beacon at night
A Beacon at night