Spanish architects MX_SI have won a competition to design an extension to a Finnish museum of art with this proposal that features recessed zigzagging windows.

The timber extension to the Serlachius Museum Gösta in Mänttä will be spread over two storeys to provide a foyer, a restaurant, offices, conference facilities, reception areas and 1000 square-metres of gallery space.

The existing museum is contained within a manor house and will connect to the extension via a new corridor.

Construction is scheduled to start in 2012 to target a spring 2014 opening.

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The following details are from the architects:

The architectural studio MX_SI based in Barcelona, is the winner of the competition for the extension of the Gösta contemporary Art Museum in Finland.

579 entries, the largest competition on Finish history MX_SI architectural studio based in Barcelona, wihich are the authors for the Federico Garcia Lorca Cultural Center in Granada, will build the extension of the Museum Gösta for Contemporary Art in Mänttä. This competition has been the largest architectural tender in Finish history with 579 participants from 42 countries.

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This international open competition was organised by the Serlachius Foundation supported by the Architecture Chamber of Finland SAFA, to extend the main building that originally was not planned as a museum. This new building, Serlachius Foundation will adequate their facilities in order to host large scale contemporary art travelling exhibitions as well as defining an appropriate space for their own collection.

The jury was integrated by musem experts and professional finish architects. It was unanimously decided last 22nd of June, to give the first prize to the project presented by Mara Partida, Boris Bezan and Héctor Mendoza. According to jury’s statements, the architecture solution proposed a fine understanding on existing features such as main building, site landscape and finish traditional and contemporary culture. The jury outstands the respect that new construction has with the place, without losing own up to date architecture expression. Some other values read by the jury are the harmony of new volume with landscape. It is an integrated body taking a clever advantage of the use of wood as a main façade material. Interior spaces develop a dialogue with the exterior enriching the expressive journey.

Construction work on the extension will begin in early 2012 and the new spaces will be opened to the public in spring 2014.

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The Project

The site is understood as a green plateau where the manor’s monolithic figure stands imposingly along a landscape axis, sloping gently to the banks of Lake Melasjärvi. The strategy consists in placing the building out of the zone in between the manor, the plateau-park and the Taavetinsaari island, in mimicking the new building within the forest, and finally in respecting the recently renovated park, as well as the formal garden design. The new premises are located in parallel to the access, manor and garden axis, on the west side of the principal axis. It uses the parameters of topography and distance to accommodate the program. In this sense the Joenniemi Manor keeps being the dominant built structure of the area.

The location of the new entrance reinforces the existing spacious access yard as access plaza of the whole intervention. The outside spatial quality is brought inside the new building. The heart of the building - foyer and restaurant - have the best view towards the lake and the island similar to the existing house main areas. The simple horizontal body of the extension building gathers all main areas in one great plateau: entrance, foyer, connection and exhibitions which facilitates visitors’ orientation. The new building is organized by a spacious foyer, placed at the same level of the ground floor of the manor. This space obtains visual continuity between outside and inside by introducing incisions of landscape to the main building body. To allow flexibility of exhibitions layout, the structure of the building is part of the façade liberating the whole space. All walls in the exhibition zone can be used for exposing.

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The project as a densified abstract forest. The forest in the placement where the new building will be constructed is conceptually transformed in an abstract way of parallel frames. In one hand they define the overall geometry of the new building, but at the same time they also allow transversal permeability. The result is that the parallel pattern of the structural frames is maintained from outside and inside structuring the whole building. The use of wood is a reference to the local industry’s history.

Architect: MX_SI architectural studio. Marta Partida, Boris Bezan, Hector Mendoza
Collaborators: Oscar Fabian Espinosa, Olga Bombač
Site: Mäntta, Finland
Surface: 3.000 m2
Client : Serlachius Foundation