Museum Gösta

Extension of an existing museum of fine arts with a new exhibition space. The call for tender, with the special landscape, moved the fantasy of numerous architects: 579 proposals arrived from 42 countries. The once-family-villa-museum was to be expanded with a new wing by the family foundation of its original owner, thus tripling the current exhibition space and creating further background spaces and workshops. The museum is located at one of the wood-and paper industry centers of the Finnish Lake area, near the town of Mänttä in beautiful and precious natural surroundings. The founder – a paper industrial is at this time - started the museum with his own fine arts collection. The museum became one of the largest fine arts museums of Finland throughout the years. Our design concept was to create a new pavilion building adjacent to the existing one in a way to allow to keep as much of the valuable park and green are as possible. We had to create over 4 times the ground floor area of the original building in the newwing, making both an above- and an underground connection, while preserving the structure of the existing building and ensuring an organic and functional unity between the two buildings. Thus, we structured the new building based on a “box in the box”-principle, building on the smallest necessary ground area. This meant that the corridors in the new building went around on an outer box and the exhibition spaces were placed in inner core boxes. We created the reception and service spaces on the ground floor and the exhibition halls on the above floors, while further units were placed beyond ground level, as well as into a smaller, third workshop area connected underground with the two main buildings. Further, we used the park area of the original villa as an outdoor statute park/exhibition space. We recycled” the previous sauna house located on the small island connected with the villa as a resting and meditation area.