"I thought in the crispy snow and the thin early ice, and I remembered stories of cold winter in Finland, where every year roads are improvised to cross the ice of Northern lakes. I imagine a last version of the cracks in the white ice and the black and frozen water. Finland is made of a mysterious and tragic beauty".



 Thin Ice. Steven Holl

How must be a museum for a place so special like the competition one, in Central Finland? It cannot be like any other museum in some different place. Finland has few light hours in winter and few hours without light in summer. Finland has a yearly average temperature of 5º. Finland has around 1,900 hours of sunlight. The average rainfall is 600 mm per year, half of them being snow. The nature in Finland, has not comparison in other country of Europe, why not highlight that?

The museum must run through nature, fit within it, and show this landscape as an art object. We focus in maintain the memory of the place, its DNA, a series of pieces, the program of the museum, that are disseminated in the middle of the landscape, the sauna, the island as a place for landscape intervention, where you can go in winter, just when the lake freezes. We propose to fragment the program, like the ice gets fragmented in Finland, like the fragmented landscape of the lakes, that you see when you fly over like pieces of ice melting, the volume of the different pieces of program [buildings] decrease when getting closer to the lake, the water, the island….

The program contains the exhibition halls and the auditorium, in three different pieces. The old museum building becomes one more exhibition hall. The last piece is smaller, closer to the water border and a little bit buried. At the end the island, like a new landscape exhibition space of the building, accessible in winter, when the lake freezes. What can be a better bridge that the one that nature gives. The new "belt" is running along the building, giving sense to all the proposal. The wood appears here as material that unites and connects all the buildings. The "belt" gives some protection, some rythm, sometimes also in the facade of some of the buildings, sometimes on the floor, we can also find the wood in the ceilings or in other elements. 



Re-interpretation of Finnish farms


Moderate Scale


Connection with nature landscape

Forum, Square


Organic city [Aaltos plan for Seinájoki, Säinätsalo, Rovaniemi]


The sauna as a "Finnish" element, some kind of art to show.