More than a container of archives and exhibitions of art, museums today perform complex social functions beyond their job description as neutral buildings. Our proposal for the Helsinki Guggenheim Museum is based on these broader questions about what the museum is today, and what more it can be. Comprised of five primary horizontal layers and six vertical figures, Museum is More presents a stacked diagram of alternating programs, sandwiching an elevated public landscape between two thick layers of museum functions. The six vertical figures each perform a collateral function – restaurant, café, bar, hotel, shopping and academy. Here, casual visitors are still able to access the museum without attending the galleries. These figures touch the ground to lead visitors into the building. They extend their day-to-day use into the urban fabric, folding the museum into the citizen's daily routines. As a symbol, a space and an idea, the museum performs as a graphic symbol of the city. It is a place to be remembered by its visitors and to inspire artists that strive to add to its collections. On a cultural level the museum is a stage on which taste-makers and eccentric characters orient the creative flow of the world. On a social level, the museum provides moments of intimacy and exhibitionism. A place to see and be seen; to consume and to produce. It is a place where rules are set and broken over the fine line between the conventional institution and the avant garde.
Museum is More does not simply collect and exhibit art; it projects the future of how people collect and exhibit art. The museum is a container for a collection of collections, both in terms of its patrons and the work it houses. Moreover, the museum extends itself to communicate its own language by which we understand the cultural history of every art piece and artist within its walls. Museum is More is a social platform for both domestic and international strangers - all lovers of culture, coffee, and conversation.
