Museums are the gauge of a city’s cultural vitality. The Sara Hildén Art Museum and its collection is an integral and significant part of Tampere’s cultural life. Relocating and expanding the museum to the Finlayson historical district will naturally enhance urban activity and increase the museum’s capabilities to exhibit contemporary art. This proposal aims to augment the museum’s effect by focusing on the two main functions of contemporary art museums: engagement with art and civic connectivity. The new Sara Hildén Art Museum is an urban integration responding to the environment by maximizing daylight into a new public square while stimulating street life with the café, museum store, and art workshop along the Kuninkaankatu pedestrian street. The museum building itself is a practical conversation between art and architecture. Showmanship, curatorship, and scholarship are the functions of a museum and here they are framed by an efficient organization of building systems to facilitate these functions with ultimate flexibility.
In spirit, the building is indisputably Finnish. It is contemporary yet rooted in the traditional. Fluted granite façades from the Terälahti quarry 40km to the north vibrate with the horizontal Nordic light, emphasizing the dynamic environment much like the brick facades of the original factory buildings. Wood is used where the visitor touches the building. Diffuse light grazes the wall of the spiral stair recalling local spiritual buildings and the north-facing saw-tooth roof reincarnated from the original factory buildings captures the zenithal light for even distribution in the most intimate galleries. The cool, dark light experienced for much of the year is contrasted by the warm and inviting ground floor giving the visitor a quintessential northern experience: connection with the harsh northern climate from within safe shelter. The new Sara Hildén Art Museum serves the art while harmonizing one’s connection to the natural and built worlds.
Whether walking from the Keskustori Central Square and through Finlayson district or crossing the Palatsinsilta Bridge on bicycle, visitors will arrive to a new public square framed by the red-bricked factory buildings and a granite mass, floating above the transparent café and museum lobby. Direct sun reaches the plaza and café until late autumn. The plaza is the new gathering place from which adventures in art, nature, or the city begin. Connections between the parks along Lake Näsijärvi and the city pass directly through the building between the café and the eastern staircase. Transparency and simplicity at the ground level combines vibrant exterior and interior life while reducing the scale and physicality of the building. This new architecture compliments the opaque and decorated Neo-Gothic factory facades. Transparency and permeability are the themes at street level with the opaque rooms becoming pavilion-like volumes to circulate around and between. The clear-span structure creates generous light-filled spaces and encourages long views from the street to Wilhelm von Nottbeck park. Sculptures in the lobby with the nature as backdrop recalls experiences from the current museum in Särkänniemi park. The sun-filled museum pedagogical workshop is directly in view from the street and lobby. As in the exterior plaza, the lobby is a social space for cultural exchange. A grand spiral stair motivates one to climb to the galleries.
Art is what society creates when free to express themselves and break the rules. Contemporary art breaks from tradition by freeing itself from ornamented and thick wooden frames hanging on decorated walls. Previously confined to a window into a scene, contemporary art escapes into the space with the viewer, cohabitating, and demanding participation. This dialogue requires an architecture neutralized and more discreet than in the past. Viewers should be comfortable, free, and at ease to appreciate and contemplate the artworks without distraction.
The proposed galleries are generous and flexible. Consistent for all floors, the structural framing spans from north to south across the entire space allowing for a wide range of contemporary artwork to be exhibited and curated in infinite arrangements. Works can be viewed within these vast spaces, creating a sense of grandeur and long views, or inside intimate rooms if the work requires a tighter space. Total flexibility in the architecture facilitates endless narratives for the artists, curators, and viewers.
Subtle qualitative differences between galleries are deliberate and purposeful. Ascending and descending the spiral stair stirs the mind and orients the visitor. An east-facing window allows light inward while providing glimpses to the Tammerkoski Rapids. Northern windows connect the galleries to the park and Finlayson Palace and from the east end of the third gallery floor Lake Näsijärvi can be seen, conjuring the experience at the original lakeside setting of the museum. These areas with natural indirect light can be used to display sculpture or simply as places to dwell. The stacked, expansive galleries, and their views outward, promote a sense of discovery for the artwork and the museum’s surroundings.
Given the established built and natural features of the area, the new Museum respects the proportions of the neighboring buildings and integrates into the Wilhelm von Nottbeck park physically and visually. Viewed from Finlayson Palace, the building is solid yet porous. The large trees within the park and along the property line give the sense of a museum in a park. The south elevation, facing the Neo-Gothic factory facades, is a solid monolith calmy floating above the street. Like today, the pedestrian will continue to walk along the street trees unobstructed while feeling only a short distance away from the connected parks leading to Särkänniemi. The western building mass works with the small P-Kunkku parking garage access building to recreate the gate that once enclosed the factory-city.
HVAC, Energy, and Sustainability
To meet the city requirement of becoming CO2-neutral by 2030, the museum is designed with sustainability and efficiency practices. The energy sources of the area are close to CO2-neutral and connecting the building to the district heating and cooling systems essentially future-proofs the system. However, a prerequisite for achieving CO2-neutrality is minimizing the energy demand. To that end, the building is highly insulated and constructed with local and recycled materials. Efficient energy use is also achieved by minimizing outdoor air supply with CO2-controlled ventilation. Sensible and latent energy recovery systems will be placed in the basement mechanical room while a distributed air-handling system minimizes duct lengths to reduce friction losses. Low-temperature heating and high-temperature cooling is used wherever possible.
To achieve the desired volume of urban greenspace, the site is paved with a semi-permeable stone paving. All significant existing trees have been maintained except for a single tree to allow access to the loading area. A stonecrops roof has been included on the parking garage access building as well as the other opaque roofs on the museum. The existing below-grade parking structure can be repurposed as a retention basin. Using these strategies, the Green Factor has been estimated to be approximately 0.71.
Structure
Working in tandem with the mechanical systems, the structural system facilitates the flexibility of the galleries and lobby floor. The floor and roof framing consists of long-span steel and concrete composite beams which bear on the northern walls and the southern full-floor trusses. To achieve the column-free soffit above the café and plaza, a cantilevered truss system anchored to the eastern stair tower supports the simple-span trusses along the south façade.
Site ground conditions are such that the basement level is partially within bedrock and below the water-table. To ensure that the groundwater surface is not lowered under the Finlayson Church, a system of sheet piles and injection waterproofing between the bedrock and piles would be used. The excavation and water removal would only take place once a seal to the bedrock has been achieved.
Daylighting
A north-facing and curved sawtooth roof optimizes and regulates daylight access passively under different sky conditions and in different sun angles throughout the year. The roof shape is designed specifically to work with the location of the museum, and to make the most of the corresponding low angle sunlight and account for the prevailing sky conditions. The roof shape manages contrast and delivers a balanced illumination to the galleries.
