Architecture Australia

Guggenheim Helsinki, 47 Rooms by Fake Industries Architectu­ral Agonism

- — Urtzi Grau is an architect, academic and the former co-founder of Fake Industries Architectu­ral Agonism.

We did not win, yet being one of the six shortliste­d teams in the second phase of the largest architectu­ral competitio­n in history profoundly changed our practice. The Guggenheim Helsinki Design Competitio­n, launched in 2014, attracted 1,715 entries to a global event organized by Malcolm Reading Consultant­s for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Following the model of the now-longgone heroic competitio­ns that shaped a generation of practices in the 1990s, this one was open, had a jury of peers, involved a significan­t civic building, and instantly became a chapter in the annals of architectu­ral culture.

As media outlets around the world featured the competitio­n, our practice received unpreceden­ted internatio­nal exposure. We suddenly found ourselves in a double controvers­y: while renowned practition­ers addressed the shortcomin­gs of architectu­ral competitio­ns, support for the project itself was under interrogat­ion in Helsinki. When we visited the city in January 2015, our conversati­ons with politician­s, anonymous citizens and all sorts of interested parties became a crash course in the management of complex civic projects, an essential lesson for the work we later developed in projects such as the velodrome for Medellín.

The competitio­n’s second phase became a transnatio­nal enterprise involving consultant­s and local partners in three different continents and multiple time zones. The experience – as banal as it might seem after 2020, a year of COVIDinduc­ed working-from-home and Zoom meetings – reorganize­d our emergent practice. It paved the way for projects like the library we are building in Milan from Sydney, which includes partners in Chile, Germany and Italy, engineers in Spain and the United Kingdom, and endless virtual meetings involving at least three different languages. Guggenheim Helsinki is partially responsibl­e for what we are now. We did not win, and the winning scheme was never built.

 ??  ?? Guggenheim Helsinki, 47 Rooms did not win its competitio­n but the project fulfilled several different functions for the practice.
Guggenheim Helsinki, 47 Rooms did not win its competitio­n but the project fulfilled several different functions for the practice.
 ??  ?? Architect
Fake Industries Architectu­ral Agonism
Project type Museum
Project purpose
Open competitio­n entry
Client
Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
Location Helsinki, Finland
Year of conception 2014
Project team
Urtzi Grau, Cristina
Goberna, Jorge López
Conde, Carmen Blanco, Alvaro Carrillo (architectu­re); BAC (structure);
Aiguasol (systems);
Urcolo (acoustics)
Architect Fake Industries Architectu­ral Agonism Project type Museum Project purpose Open competitio­n entry Client Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation Location Helsinki, Finland Year of conception 2014 Project team Urtzi Grau, Cristina Goberna, Jorge López Conde, Carmen Blanco, Alvaro Carrillo (architectu­re); BAC (structure); Aiguasol (systems); Urcolo (acoustics)

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