HELSINKI.- The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation today announced that the six architectural teams whose concepts were shortlisted in the Guggenheim Helsinki Design Competition will visit the city from January 14–16, 2015, to view the site of the proposed new museum, receive further briefing on the building program and feedback on their initial designs, and present their previous work in a free public lecture. The visit is intended to provide the architects with information and insights to help them develop their ideas for final submission in April 2015 and to give Helsinki residents an opportunity to hear directly from the shortlisted teams.

Events planned include a visit to the South Harbor site, followed by briefings with representatives of the City of Helsinki, the State of Finland, and other stakeholders on topics including the art, culture, economy, and urban fabric of Helsinki, and with representatives from the Guggenheim on the history, collections, programs, and exhibitions of the foundation. The teams also will receive in-depth critiques of their shortlisted design proposals from the jury along with additional feedback from key leadership at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. On January 16, at the Scandic Grand Marina hotel, the finalist teams will participate in a free public lecture about their philosophy and practice, beginning at 2 pm.

In alphabetical order, the finalists are:

• AGPS Architecture Ltd. (Zurich, Switzerland and Los Angeles, United States of America)

• Asif Khan Ltd. (London, United Kingdom)

• Fake Industries Architectural Agonism (New York, United States of America; Barcelona, Spain; and Sydney, Australia)

• Haas Cook Zemmrich STUDIO2050 (Stuttgart, Germany)

• Moreau Kusunoki Architect (Paris, France)

• SMAR Architecture Studio (Madrid, Spain and Western Australia)

While the names of the six teams are now public, the designs have not been matched to the teams, nor will the jurors or public know which team is responsible for which design until the winner has been announced in June 2015.

Ari Wiseman, Deputy Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, will co-host the team visit with Helsinki Deputy Mayor Ritva Viljanen. Wiseman stated, “We are delighted to bring together all six of the competition finalists in Helsinki. We hope the Helsinki community will be as excited as we are by the opportunity to meet these extraordinary designers and to hear more about their work. We regard this public engagement as an indispensable element not only of the design competition but of everything we would expect to do in a Guggenheim museum in Helsinki.”

Full Design Competition Submission Content Made Available to Public
As an element of this ongoing public engagement, the Guggenheim has now made available all of the content of the 1,715 first-round submissions to the competition. Since October 2014, an online gallery on the competition website, designguggenheimhelsinki.org, has made public the two representative images and concept description that were required for each entry. Now the Guggenheim is sharing the additional, in-depth material required of all competitors: four submission boards that address cityscape, architecture, and usability criteria. This full set of content, which was reviewed by the competition jury during its deliberations, is available for further analysis, investigation, and study at the Guggenheim Helsinki GitHub web page.

“The Guggenheim Helsinki Design Competition has initiated an extraordinary generosity of architectural intelligence toward the Guggenheim, the City of Helsinki, and the State of Finland,” says Troy Conrad Therrien, Curator of Architecture and Digital Initiatives at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. “Our initiative to open the full data set offers this intellectual capital to the public as a resource to investigate the state of architecture today and its promises for tomorrow.”

Competition Next Steps
Further to the original Competition Conditions presented in Stage One, the Stage Two brief, which offers finalists additional technical information to be considered in the development of their designs, will be available on the competition website on Wednesday, January 14. The shortlisted designs, and a selection of honorable mentions noted by the jury, will be presented in a public exhibition in Helsinki in spring 2015. The winning design will be announced in June 2015, with an award of €100,000 (approximately $136,000) for the first-place team and €55,000 (approximately $75,000) for each runner-up.