Maija Lavonen – Quietly Monumental: Audio Recording

“In my work I see a clear connection to experiences of nature, even quite early ones. I seek that absoluteness in which lies the strength of my childhood experiences. It is important for me to simplify, condense the mood. I never try to copy what I have actually seen in nature, merely convey my experience of it, stripped bare to allow only what is essential to come to the fore. This essential element is the experience.

I was four or five years old. We lived in the countryside. I had an empty glass jar in my hand which I put on the lawn. I turned it with my foot, kicking it forward. As the blades of grass bent under it, suddenly it occurred: light, brightness, bent grass, a deep green colour. I shall never forget that moment when the elements of light and grass, brilliance and earth, mingled.

In my work I always try to highly simplify the final result. At first sight it may seem that what I have done and those powerful experiences of nature which are so dear to me do not have much in common, as my works are so ascetic, severe. Nevertheless, the experiences which lie behind my work are visually extremely rich.

I was a few years old. During the week, my father worked for weeks on end as a coast guard far from home, and I was always unspeakably happy when he returned. One day I was confused by my father’s sudden return in the company of strangers. I could not face them. As my feelings of happiness seethed within me, I dashed out to the back of the house, to a field, a meadow full of blossoming globeflowers. I was so tiny that this sea of waving yellow flowers was at eye level. I ran among them and suddenly realised that moment of colour, that yellow mass of flowers around me and their overpowering smell heightened by the arrival of dusk’s dampness. It was then that I saw, sensed, what colour in its deepest meaning really is. Colour may be an overwhelming sensation, a spreading surface, a mood of light and fragrances.

For me seeing and feeling are one and the same. One could even say: It suddenly dawned on me. For in that sudden moment, that split second, the experience was complete. To speak one word takes longer. In my work I often struggle for this kind of instant.

Sensing nature is still a human right. In my work I seek humane messages, I desire to give something to weary people. I would like to convey to them, for instance, the summer light on the surface of the sea, the song of the waves, the reddish hues of the skerries and the burning heat of the sun, the warmth of the rocks under the slow moving clouds. In many of my blue-white linen textiles I have sought these fresh sea sensations.

Materials are of primary importance to those working with textiles. The difference between light and heavy, smooth or coarse, can be felt by hand. Even the contrasts of different materials, and combining them together, are enough to inspire one to seek the source of sensation. In my ryijy rugs, with the aid of an austere range of greys, I have tried merely not to describe the boundary between the sea and the sky, but the moment when I sensed it within me. The moment when the spring winds stand still, clouds cover the sun, and one knows from the dark watery spots where the snow has gone that soon the ice will melt.

When I use nature as a medium, I at the same time want to communicate that we all have the right to experience nature, and that we also have the right to stop the destruction of our environment. Today we are at the point where the worry for our environment and the shattering of its equilibrium is known to all, BUT – how can we put an end to this shortsighted senseless striving for progress?

My last works are outcries. The Sky is Crying is an exclamation mark.”

Maija Lavonen

This article was written by Maija Lavonen for the “As I saw” series, published in the cultural pages of the national newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, August 12, updated on December 4, 2017. Translation: Tomi Snellman

MAIJA LAVONEN – QUIETLY MONUMENTAL

Maija Lavonen (1931–2023) was an acclaimed pioneer of Finnish textile art. Throughout her long career, she was an avid experimenter who moved effortlessly between diverse materials and techniques. A clothing designer by training, she expanded her repertoire to fabric prints, double cloth weavings and other interior textiles in the late 1960s. She became an independent art practitioner in the late 1970s, at which point ryijy wool pile tapestries emerged as her specialty. One of her innovations was the use of wide, hand-woven ribbons that she joined together to create large-scale spatial pieces from the 1980s onwards. Optical fibre became her principal material in the early 2000s. Central to her work was the dialogue between the texture and structure of textiles and space, with the architectural context and its light often forming the starting point for her artistic process.

Lavonen’s early experiences exerted a lifelong influence on her textile art. She often revisited her childhood memories, especially those associated with nature, above all the sea, forests and meadows. Memories of colours and feelings evoked by nature found distilled expression in her textile art. Handcrafting meant everything to Lavonen – it was in the act of making that her ideas and inspirations found a tangible form.

MAIJA LAVONEN 1931–2023

Maija Lavonen (née Luukela) was born in Olhava village in the municipality of Ii, which lies in the northern province of Oulu. She spent her childhood and youth in Kemi. She studied fashion design at the Institute of Industrial Arts from 1953 to 1956, followed by a year of painting studies at Helsinki’s Free Art School. After her studies, she entered the service of Katinette, a Helsinki-based clothing manufacturer. In 1958 she secured a teaching position at a girls’ vocational school in Karhula.

Maija Luukela married the painter Ahti Lavonen in 1958. The couple exerted a notable formative influence on one other’s artistic philosophies. Together they led a cosmopolitan artist lifestyle in the 1960s, Paris being an especially beloved travel destination. After Ahti Lavonen succumbed to an aggressive illness in 1970, Maija Lavonen became a single mother of two. Art served a therapeutic function during her grieving process, culminating in her first solo exhibition at Kluuvi Gallery in 1970.

A major turning point in Lavonen’s career was her solo exhibition at Turku’s Wäinö Aaltonen Museum in 1978. Following the show’s success, she devoted herself mainly to commissioned projects and solo exhibitions. While working on commissions, Lavonen came up with new ideas that she later adapted and continued developing in her independent projects. Bold experimentation and boundless curiosity were defining features of her practice. Lavonen established herself as one of Finland’s most successful textile artists in the 1980s, and she continued practising art until her death.

CONNECTING THREADS

Featured here is a three-part film installation created for this exhibition by architect and video artist Tapio Snellman exploring Maija Lavonen’s multidimensional art interwoven with built and natural environments.

The first part introduces spatial textile pieces commissioned for public institutions that were not possible to include in the exhibition. Four textile works are highlighted in the video. Textile on Three Surfaces (Tekstiili kolmessa tasossa) is a spatial piece displayed in the waiting room of the Speaker’s Office in the Finnish Parliament. Also dating from 1982 is

Nature as the Source (Luonto lähteenä), a commissioned piece found in the lobby of the Ministry of the Interior on Kirkkokatu in Helsinki. Lake Haukivesi (Haukivesi) was completed for Varkaus City Library in 1985, and Scala is a wool pile tapestry commissioned for the Finnish National Opera’s VIP lounge in 1994.

The other two parts take a close look at Lavonen’s conceptual starting points and sources of inspiration. Colours and feelings evoked by nature were always highly important to Lavonen. In the film, Snellman presents her tapestry swatches in natural settings and juxtaposes her watercolour sketches with the tranquil scenery of her birthplace, Sea Lapland. The outdoor footage was filmed in the Hiittinen archipelago in the summer of 2024 in collaboration with architect Ulla Vainikka. The scenery of Sea Lapland was filmed by Juha Niemelä in autumn 2024 and the ryijy wool pile tapestries were photographed by Anni Koponen.

HUMAN TOUCH

The economic boom of the 1980s offered textile artists unprecedented work opportunities through commissions for public spaces and business premises. From the early 1980s onwards, Lavonen’s textile pieces grew noticeably larger. As they grew, they escaped the wall and began spreading into the space around them. Large-scale ryijy wool pile tapestries dominated Lavonen’s oeuvre in the 1980s. Making a wool pile tapestry is time-consuming, as each knot is tied by hand. Lavonen described the labour-intensive process as a way of “storing time” in the artwork, reminding us that human touch is an essential part of the creative process.

The onset of the recession in the early 1990s brought new construction projects and textile art commissions to a standstill. Owing to the high cost of hand-made ryijy production, Lavonen designed relatively few large-scale wool pile tapestries in the 1990s, focusing instead on her independent artistic practice and exhibitions. A steady flow of commissions enabled her to continue staging solo exhibitions regularly.

Lavonen constructed many of her large-scale spatial pieces by sewing together wide, hand-woven ribbons of linen, which she then combined with other materials such as steel. She applied the same principle in her fibre optic sculp-tures in the 2000s, in which the warp consisted of optical fibre instead of linen. Ribbon-like elements were woven into this glowing weft illuminated by a light projector.

WEAVER OF LIGHT

It was partly by chance that Lavonen began using optical fibre as her signature material in the 2000s. It all began when she was commissioned to create a textile piece for the staircase of the Ministry of the Interior. As the space was difficult to illuminate, the client wanted the artwork itself to serve as a source of light. Lavonen decided to experiment with a lighting innovation: fibre optics. She hand-wove optical fibres and then transformed them into a light-emitting

fabric with the help of an integrated illuminator. Her fibre optic creations employ the ribbon joining technique she invented in 1978, but with the warp consisting of optical fibre rather than linen, and the weft of linen yarn and acrylic accents.

Valo lähteenä (Light as the Source) was completed for the Ministry of the Interior in 2005. Lavonen’s first encounter with fibre optics led to a long-term fascination with this novel material. Her fibre optic textile art featured in many exhibitions until 2020. Metsän kruunu (Forest Crown) (2010) is the piece she regarded as her proudest achievement with fibre optics.

EXPERIENCING NATURE

Lavonen’s art is invariably rooted in her experiences of nature. The artist described nature as “soothing, healing and revitalizing”. She felt deeply connected to the powerful rhythm of the changing seasons, and derived strength and faith from the certain knowledge that summer would always triumph over the bitter winds of winter.

Natural elements such as sea, stone, cliffs and forest are recurring motifs in Lavonen’s art. Her memories of connecting with nature while living in Kotka from 1958 to 1961 are among the powerful experiences she often revisited in her art, especially the unforgettable sight of the large erratic boulders found on Cape Katariinanniemi. She displayed two works inspired by the landscapes of Kotka at Galleria Sculptor in 1981: the two-part wool pile tapestry Iso kivi (Large Boulder), and a composition of woven linen ribbons joined together to form Kiveä (Stone), a monumental piece evoking a rock surface with its relief-like texture and purple and grey colour scheme.

Lavonen’s experience of nature is often conveyed purely through colour. The atmosphere of autumn in Lapland is captured in vibrant hues of red and orange. Kevät (Spring) depicts patches of black earth emerging from receding snow with the promise of new growth.

REVISITED MEMORIES

Lavonen grew up on the Bothnian Bay, spending her early childhood in Olhava village in the municipality of Ii, and later moving to Kemi. Her memories of the Northern landscape, especially the sea and horizon, or more precisely the feelings they evoked, became an enduring source of inspiration for her art. Many of her compositions portray a horizon between sea and sky. Lavonen painted her first minimalistic horizon compositions in her sketchbook in 1977. Horizons remained a recurring motif in her art until the 2000s.

Memories and feelings evoked by Kemi’s seascapes are the subject of the wool pile tapestries and laminated silkscreen prints that Lavonen presented in her 1978 solo exhibition at the Wäinö Aaltonen Museum in Turku. Many wool pile tapestries in the exhibition were square-shaped and minimalistic, their nuanced grey palette evoking the cold gloom of the northern sea, while at the same time delivering a glimmer of hope.

Lavonen continued exploring sea horizons in her linen ribbon pieces from 1980 and 1981, some of which leapt from the wall and spread across the floor and interior.

Five developed proposals for Finland’s New Museum of Architecture and Design in Helsinki have been unveiled for a final round of public feedback.

The anonymous proposals have been prepared during the final phase of the international, open, design competition to find a design team for a new 10,050 sq m museum building that will be constructed on the Makasiiniranta waterfront, in Helsinki’s historically significant South Harbour district.

Members of the public can submit comments until 31 July via the City of Helsinki’s Kerrokantasi (Voice your opinion) online platform. A summary of the public input will be compiled and shared with the competition jury before the winner is selected. The result of the competition will be announced on 11 September 2025, after which the design process will continue based on the winning proposal.

The central mission of the new museum will be “democratising the tools of design”, and the competition has been participatory from the outset: museum audiences and professionals from various disciplines have been widely consulted, with their insight shaping both the competition brief and the museum’s conceptual development. During the second stage, proposals have been assessed through a multidisciplinary lens. Beyond architecture and cityscape, the jury has considered perspectives related to urban culture, design education, and how to better serve groups with special needs.

The open phase of the competition was launched in April 2024, attracting 624 submissions from around the world. The five finalists were first announced in December 2024 and are named City, Sky & Sea; Kumma; Moby; Tau; and Tyrsky. The process of developing the proposals began in February 2025, following an opportunity for public feedback, which was communicated to the design teams alongside guidance from the jury and project team.

Kaarina Gould, CEO of the Foundation for the Finnish Museum of Architecture and Design, said:

“The aim of the competition is to design a new museum building in a fair and transparent way. Finland has a strong tradition of anonymous architectural competitions, which allows the jury to focus entirely on the content of the proposals.  Within the framework of anonymity, we wanted to give the design teams an opportunity for direct engagement with future museum users through a series of workshops, which we believe have led to stronger proposals. It will be truly exciting to see and hear what the people of Helsinki — and anyone interested in the new museum — think of the final submissions.

“Design and architecture are such fundamental parts of Finnish identity that this competition is about much more than a building. It’s a long-term investment in our cultural heritage and shared future. Even during construction, the project will create jobs and drive economic growth, and once open in 2030, the museum will become a key attraction for Helsinki and Finland”

Mikko Aho, Chair of the competition jury, said:

“During phase 2 of the design competition, the jury gave thorough feedback on each of the five proposals. Our focus was on three priorities: firstly, on developing the functionality of the museum spaces so that they are adaptable for future needs. Secondly on how the building interacts with it’s surroundings, creating an inviting urban environment, and thirdly on setting the right ambition level in creating a climate-resilient building. Our task now is to evaluate how the proposals meet the goals of the competition.”

The new museum of architecture and design in Helsinki will draw on the rich traditions and contemporary strength of design and architecture in Finland and the Nordic region. It will offer engaging programs that reveal the relevance and potential of design in a changing world. The new building will also host high-profile touring exhibitions and offer attractive public services, from a design library to an open-access summer terrace.

The competition brief tasked participants with designing a museum that meets the urban and architectural demands of thishistorically important site, while also delivering on the museum’s goals of being flexible, inclusive, and welcoming.

Sustainability — ecological, social, and cultural — is a key principle guiding both the design and construction of the new museum. Helsinki has committed to becoming carbon neutral by 2030, and the museum project actively supports this goal across its operations.

Proposals

City, Sky and Sea‍

Due to its curved walls and roof, the new building gives a tent-like impression. The façades of the building consist of cast panels made from recycled glass. The museum has been designed with a large staircase in the central lobby and exhibition spaces around it following the curved forms of the facades. In addition to a translucent glass roof, two terraces have been placed on the roof — one facing the Market Square and the other facing the sea.

Kumma‍

The new museum building has been designed to be compact and low in height, preserving views from Tähtitorninvuori Park towards the Market Square and Katajanokka. The proposal’s slanted, stepped walls, and the triangular forms of the facade continue into the interior and the main stairs. The exhibition floor overlooks the sea from a large terrace, which continues as a wrap-around outdoor gallery and balcony.

‍

Moby‍

The new building is designed with a wedge-shaped footprint, leaving space on the side for views from the waterfront towards Tähtitorninvuori Park. The interior of the building offers large views of the surroundings. The façade of the building is made of recycled light-bricks. On the roof is a large terrace with a view of the sea.

Tau‍

The rectangular building is low in its height and the large glass facades connect the interior of the museum to the building’s surroundings. The building materials are glass, granite and different wood materials such as birch and pine. There is a large terrace on the roof.

Tyrsky‍

The building, with its curved roof and zinc-sheet cladding consists of rectangular volumes. In the middle of the building, there is a small inner courtyard, which also allows daylight into the centre of the building. The undulating roof draws inspiration from the sea and its rhythms. The proposal uses solid timber for both load-bearing structures and interior surfaces.

The design competition is arranged by the city and state-owned Real Estate Company ADM together with the Foundation for the Finnish Museum of Architecture and Design. The new museum is made possible with funding from the City of Helsinki, State of Finland and generous donations from several private foundations.

Read more about the design competition here

In the anonymous design competition for the new Museum of Architecture and Design in Helsinki we used co-creation on an unprecedented scale. We like to think our goal was to make the jury’s work more difficult by making all finalist designs as good as possible.

By Tommi Laitio

Finland lives and breathes design and architecture. The Finnish design tradition is a globally known brand, a source of national pride and one of the main reasons to travel to Finland. So when in 2022, the Government of Finland and the City of Helsinki, together with philanthropic partners, made the decision to establish the Foundation for the Finnish Museum of Architecture and Design with the intention of building a new world-class museum, the expectations could not be higher.  

Combining architecture and design into one museum had been decades in the making. In the concept for the new museum, the ambition was nothing short of democratizing the tools of design and architecture, while raising awareness on how design can be used for creating more sustainable futures. The selected plot is part of Helsinki’s iconic skyline with the Presidential Palace, City Hall and the two cathedrals. The €150 million endowment for the museum would be made at a time when most museums, artists and arts institutions were facing austerity measures. Not to mention that this was not any museum but that of design and architecture.

Therefore, getting this right in terms of process and result was critical.

Balancing Anonymity and Engagement

The discussions with the Finnish architect community made it clear that every architect in Finland and beyond would want to win the project. Simultaneously, we knew that both the Association of Architects and the public funders required that the project would follow the 150-year Finnish tradition of anonymous, two-stage competition. In a two-stage competition, the jury chooses the finalists and the competition organization provides them with a development grant for their final submission. The works would compete anonymously, meaning that the jury and the commissioning organization would learn the identities of the designers only after the winner had been chosen. Due to regulations, the competition would need to be EU-wide and a public procurement process.  

There’s a lot of reasons to be proud of the competition tradition. Most notable Finnish architects have made their breakthroughs in anonymous competitions. An anonymous competition is what has resulted in many of Finland’s iconic buildings, like Alvar Aalto’s Paimio Sanatorium (1933) and Helsinki’s Central Library Oodi (Ala Architects 2018). Ideally, an anonymous competition removes bias from the competition. The work speaks for itself regardless whether the architect is a seasoned professional or straight out of school.

Simultaneously we were doing something incredibly complicated. The museum building is part of a larger development of the harbour area, which requires immense amounts of coordination. The project’s public funding creates a moral obligation for public engagement and co-creation. Stakeholder engagement is needed to improve the design but also to build advocacy and legitimacy for the project. Also, the museum staff has tremendous and critical expertise, which would be foolish to ignore.  

So we needed a competition process that would build on ambitions that first seem to be in direct contradiction: doing things together and doing things anonymously. We needed an innovative way to bring more views and expertise into the process, while securing a firewall between the competition jury and the design teams. Breaks in the firewall could result in lawsuits, delays, decrease in public trust or even an obligation to disquality and redo the entire competition.

‍Step 1: Supporting the Selection of Finalists

There is a strong precedent and an expectation that the competition needs an approval from the Finnish Association of Architects’s (SAFA) competition committee, which also appoints two members to the jury. After months of negotiation, we agreed on an enhanced version of the traditional two-stage competition.  

We knew from recent anonymous and international competitions for Helsinki’s Central Library Oodi (544 entries) and Helsinki’s Guggenheim Museum (1715 entries) that it was likely that the first stage would attract a flood of entries. There was no intentional goal to achieve a record-high number of applications and intentional decisions were made to manage this. The entry was limited to 12 pages, focusing on the building’s concept, exterior and its connection to the cityscape. The competition was limited only to graduated architects.

The expectation of a flood was not misplaced. The competition attracted 624 entries. An online gallery of all the proposals opened to the public during Helsinki Design Week in September 2024.

The jury undertook the extensive labour of reviewing the entries with the first milestop being a semifinalist list: 20-30 works that best met the ambitious demands set in the competition brief.  

It is common practice that as the jury moves from semifinalists to finalists, their deliberation is supported with expert reviews by urban planners, structural engineers, and economists.

We wanted to go further.

Considering the ambitions set for the museum experience, we saw it as crucial that expertise on museum operations and urban culture would be elevated to the same level of importance as knowledge in financial planning, structural engineering or architecture. We recruited a group of internationally recognized urban culture and museum experts not affiliated with the competition organization. Their task was similar to that of engineers, architects and urban planners: to give detailed feedback based on their fields of expertise, such as exhibition design, museum logistics, city events, food and beverage, and customer experience. They commented on things such as how well the technical spaces functioned for moving large objects, the feasibility of audiovisual experiences inside and and on the museum, how the workshop spaces would function for children and how well the design demonstrated an understanding of the critical role of the library and resource center for research. As the independent facilitator for the entire engagement process, I then summarized this feedback into short briefs for the jury.

The jury announced the five finalists on December 18th, 2024. Upon agreeing to the terms of the second phase of the competition, such as adding various technical expertise to the design teams, each of the finalists received 50,000 euros to develop their final submission.  

The five first pages of each of the finalist entries were published on the City of Helsinki’s engagement platform for review and commentary. The discussion online was lively, critical and demonstrated a high level of understanding of architecture. Many of the comments focused on criticizing individual entries or calling for “wow” architecture. Reading some of the comments raised questions whether the online platform might have also functioned as a channel for anger and frustration for those architects and other design professionals who had put hundreds and hundreds of hours into their submission only to receive a negative decision. Looking back, there could have been a clearer communication effort from the competition organization to explain that the winning museum would not be selected based on the current material but now the teams would have months to develop or even radically change their entry based on the feedback they received from the jury.

Normally the teams develop their proposal based on written feedback from the jury. Again, we wanted to go further. We decided to do something that had never been done at this scale in Finland: to provide expert consultation on the functionality and experience to all the finalist teams.

Step 2: Expert Feedback

In January 2025, four expert groups reviewed the finalist designs and provided feedback on each of them. The identities of the designers were not disclosed to these experts. The four groups of experts were selected based on the museum’s concept and they were:

• the museums’ staff
• teachers and other educators
• urban culture professionals such as police, skateboarders, youth work event organizers, and tourism experts
• accessibility experts

All of the experts had the same assignment: review the works individually and participate in a four-hour workshop in Helsinki. In the workshop, each entry received the same amount of time for review. As the independent facilitator for the entire process, it was my responsibility to ensure that each entry was treated fairly and to capture the feedback and suggestions into a report. Next to these stakeholder workshops, we also gathered feedback from technical and structural experts.

We designed the process with great respect for the mastery and craft of architects. The goal was not to redesign the entries but to support the design intent and provide practical feedback on functionality and experience. Rather than ranking or comparing the entries, we started fresh with each entry. In our preparatory sessions, I described our ambition as making the jury’s work more difficult by supporting all of the five finalist designs to be as good as possible.  

Unlike engineers or architects, most of the people we invited do not work with floor plans or circulation diagrams on a daily basis. During our planning phase, we regularly faced doubt and skepticism whether these professionals would be able to be objective. Looking back, I am glad we stood our ground.

While a teacher or a skateboarder does not work with CAD images, they do know a lot about needs and spaces. From our first preparatory sessions to the actual review workshops, we received regular affirmation that we have made the right decision. These professionals showed up prepared, in time and with a clear sense of respect and integrity. One of the early educators verbalized something we witnessed in all the workshops: the power of recognition. She said:”I feel really honoured that we and our kids are recognized as important like this. That our experience is brought in at this stage and not only when we need to fix something that really does not work.”  

Even when I have done most of my career in public spaces, I learned so much from these professionals.We discussed issues like the need for calming spaces for visitors on the spectrum or for a toddler having a hissy fit. An educator explained how easy access to restrooms from children’s workshop spaces defines the adult-to-child ratio in the group and therefore the cost of the visit. We learned how the museum’s library goes far beyond books to drawings and models and how designers or researchers often spend days or weeks working on a particular material. We talked about how in this museum an exhibition can consist of valuable items in vitrines but it can also be a noisy and messy process or a big machine. We discussed how the museum’s business model depends on event spaces that provide spectacular city views and can be used outside the opening hours. Something that really stuck with me was an educator who explained how a view, a wall, an elevator or a door, actually the entire museum building, is a pedagogical object beyond the exhibitions. Another note that will stay with me forever was the emphasis of an accessibility advocate on how important it is that people with special needs can move through the museum with their company rather than being sent around the corner for an elevator.  

As a result of this engagement, we as the competition organization and I as the facilitator, improved our capacity for inclusive engagement. We learned how to use Braille printers for floor plans, how tiny 3D-prints helped blind experts but were actually beneficial for everyone.

After the workshops, we packaged the feedback with Project Manager Reetta Turtiainen and Competition Secretary Jussi Vuori. This feedback was integrated into reports with the standard technical feedback, structural feedback, and financial analysis. Each team received an extensive package of general feedback as well as detailed feedback on their submission. The level and amount of detailed feedback was way beyond a standard competition.

Step 3: Expert Workshops in Helsinki

As the second round of consultation, each team was given an opportunity to see the building site in Helsinki and receive three hours of in-person consultation from recognized experts in themes like museum pedagogy, exhibition design, food and beverage, public-private partnerships, museum operations, curation, audiovisual design and events. While a substantial financial investment, we saw this as a way to increase the quality of final submissions and an equity investment in an international competition. We designed the process with the assumption that at least some of the teams would be from abroad and many of them might not have had the time, money or means to come to Helsinki in the first stage of the competition.  

Each workshop followed an identical format.

• Presentation of the entry and first reflections on the jury’s feedback (20’)
• Expert conversation on the strengths and challenges of the entry with no interjection from the design team (30’)
• Break (15’)
• Dialogue between the design team and the experts, focused on the issues the design team wished to discuss (90’)
• Visit to the museum site

When designing this process, we took the questions of anonymity and confidentiality very seriously. All of the experts received training on the importance of confidentiality and signed non-disclosure agreements and received training on the importance of confidentiality. We made it clear in the adcance communication and in the beginning of the workshop that the experts were familiar with the competition program but were not representatives of the jury and would have no say in choosing the winner. The design teams received a stipend for travel but arranged their own travel and accommodation. The jury was not informed of the place and time of the workshops. The experts, myself included, only learned the identities of the designers as we shook hands on the morning of the workshop to prevent curious googling or other information gathering. As the facilitator, I emphasized that the teams has responsibility to make sure that they used the experts in a way that benefited their process and that they had full discretion on how and how much of the feedback they would eventually incorporate into their design. As a way to promote anonymity, we did not do written documentation of the workshops and nothing of the discussion was reported to the jury.

Highly Positive and Beneficial Experience

We were doing many things differently and faced concerns and critique along the way. Therefore, we wanted to learn from the process. The anonymous feedback gathered after the workshops demonstrated that we are on the right track. On a scale of one to five, the workshop experience received an 4,7/5 average and a 5/5 median score. The usefulness of the workshops for them now and for future competitions received an 4,6/5 average and a 5/5 median score. A clear majority of the architects would recommend using such a format in future competitions.  

The most rewarding feedback was the acknowledgement of valuable expertise beyond tradition. One of the lead architects wrote that they felt that the experts were able to make valuable contributions without disrupting the project. The architect felt that the experts were trying to go along with the concept behind the project as much as possible. Another architect said that the reactions from the experts were valuable and strengthened their own presumptions and that they received valuable ideas and inspiration for further development. Several of the designers appreciated the level of preparation that the experts had done to understand their specific design.

‍Broadening the Circle of Expertise

The feedback also demonstrates that many of the finalists, like us, see great value in the tradition of an anonymous competition. While the usefulness of the engagement was ranked high, some did raise concerns about ensuring the anonymity of the process. As one of the designers said, “If anonymity can be secured, then this is quite an efficient system.”

We take this concern seriously and took conscious choices to secure anonymity. Simultaneously, it is worth noting that already in the traditional competitions we have had urban planners, structural engineers, and financial analysts reviewing the designs or even meet with the teams in the final stages of the competition. Broadening the circle of expertise beyond finances, design and engineering demonstrates respect and builds legitimacy. Broadening the circle of valuable expertise sends an important message to disability advocates, curators, skateboarders, restaurateurs, the police, researchers, teachers, and arts educators that we need them and their expertise to create thriving public spacesis critical in creating a great museum. Our experience confirms our assumption that a teacher, an conference planner or a disability advocate can provide the same level of integrity, confidentiality, expertise and unbiased review as an engineer.

New Standard for Innovative Procurement

I spent a decade as an executive for the City of Helsinki, in charge of large capital investment decisions for instance for libraries, museums, recreation centers and libraries. Looking back, I would have loved this as a standard for procurement.

What proved to be critical was how the role of the experts was framed. They approached the designs with respect and saw their contributions as consultation rather than critique or ranking.Those who met the teams had an arm’s length distance to the commissioning organization. As a sign of success, most of the experts could see the opportunities in all of the finalists.

The benefits are clear for the commissioning organization. This kind of engagement can help the design teams avoid mistakes that would work against an otherwise stellar concept. As a simple example, If you do not work with museums or children every day, you probably won’t think about where to put 50 rucksacks when a group of enthusiastic and maybe soaked kindergarteners enter a museum but not solving that might destroy your lobby experience completely.

The competition was a public procurement process. Procurement is a field in urgent need of innovation. Our experiment shows that we can find a balance between anonymity and engagement with careful design. Engagement practices can save us from a lot of frustration and conflict later in the process. Fixing something like the location of the service lift or the access to the toilets from workshop spaces is a lot cheaper and easier at this stage of the competition.

What´s Next?

The competition teams have until the 6th of June to submit their final submissions. On June 17, the developed entries will be published for public comments in Voice Your Opinion platform hosted by the city of Helsinki. The winner will be announced in September 2025.

The announcement of the winner kicks off a new stage in co-creation and engagement. As a major investment for the city and the country, the engagement will be essential for the legitimacy of the project. It will pose a test to the winning architects to navigate the often contradictory hopes and dreams of thousands of stakeholders and the public, the budget and structural limitations of the project while holding onto their original architectural concept. The current practices of an anonymous architectural competition do not take the designers´ capability and willingness for collaboration and co-creation into account.

I hope that such stakeholder engagement and co-design will become the norm in a few years in the development for major buildings. The engagement in Helsinki´s Central Library Oodi is earlier proof that a deep understanding of needs and collaboration can create conditions for world-class results. When done well, engagement improves the likelihood of innovation and legitimacy. And what organisation would be better in charting new standards for design than a Museum of Architecture and Design?

Tommi Laitio is an internationally recognized leader and strategist on public spaces, engagement and innovation. Laitio designed and facilitated the engagement in the design competition with the competition organization. Laitio’s practice builds on his experience as City of Helsinki’s first Executive Director for Culture and Leisure (2017-2021) and his research on partnerships and engagement as the inaugural Bloomberg Public Innovation Fellow at Johns Hopkins University (2022-2024). www.tommilaitio.com