Mikko Summanen: Design through cooperation and involvement

New Visions -seminaari Logomossa 11.10.2018

• New Visions oli Historian museo Turkuun -hankkeen järjestämä kansainvälinen seminaari, jossa käsiteltiin tulevaisuuden museoita kaupunkisuunnittelun, arkkitehtuurin ja sisältöjen esittämisen näkökulmista. Julkaisemme videotallenteet puheenvuoroista YouTubessa ja blogissamme. Videotallenteet eivät ole tekstitettyjä, mutta blogin yhteydestä löytyy puheenvuorot litteroituina.

Thank you very much. Short notice indeed but hearing the title of this seminar I could not refuse this offer. Museums are coming up in Finland in several very interesting forms. At this right moment you guys have Turku Museum, very interesting project, being developed. In Helsinki the big discussion is about a super museum, the new Museum of Architecture and Design, which is equally very interesting. My intention is to talk more about the processes and ways of working when designing spaces in general, but more in focus in museums and exhibition spaces.

To design is to cooperate and to communicate. Especially if you design exhibition spaces this is true. The Mayor spoke of participation and involvement of every party in design processes. It is a very valuable and good method to use. I would like to present a project, which was completed last year in northern Helsinki, Maunula, which was a true experiment in involvement from our behalf. A process of design, which began with people on several different kinds of levels and methods, even before we do one line. Even before the space programme and the whole concept of the building was decided. This required our design practice... kind of resetting the way that we were used to work. To involve people really from the beginning means that you have to step outside of your designer's comfort zone, and to allow all kinds of people - even without any expertise - to contribute to the design process. We did this, let's say, more traditional way, like in this image, where there were discussions and talks with an open call for all the people, of course involving all the key parties of this house. Maunula House is a building that houses a library, a youth centre and a community college, as well as a lot of, kind of less programmed places for the local inhabitants. So, people would contribute. For instance, this 16-year old, Saara, would present her ideas about a specific girls' room. By the way, many of you know that today is the United Nations' Girls' Day, an important day. So, by coincidence I would have this slide. Why a girls' room designated for girls, in this part of Helsinki? We learned that the ethnic background of the people is so diverse that the Muslim girls would not come to this house unless there was a designated space for girls. So, without this kind of cooperation and involvement with the people we wouldn't know this, and that room wouldn't be there. Now it is there for their use. It's important to use different ways and tools because different people, they communicate with different tools. You may use diagrams and more traditional ways, you know, having post-its with certain small comments. Models are really great because people understand, it's very physical and it's easy to communicate. Often architects, they take for granted that people would be able to read, for instance, drawings, but this is not always true. To come out of the comfort zone, we would allow people to take part in the most sacred parts of the design process, even the form giving and what it should be like. That doesn't have to mean that you give the decision making to the people, but you allow them to contribute and this results in kind of a common, let's say, psychological ownership of the project. This is a sketch model that we did after these first talks, which starts to result in an architecture with a strong identity, even if it's a product of this process done together. Even when the design is already quite far: don't stop having these talks and involvements. So, for instance, in this part you can see these small Lego people, there's the drawing, the plan of the house. Some people would contribute on a more traditional way with comments, like really quite small things like how would, for instance, the kitchen be used, or how will you do the graphic signage of the building, and so on. Often people don't understand which level of design is going on, but it doesn't matter because the architecture or the people who control the process, they know which comments are important in which states and how to use it and how to facilitate the whole process. This method with the Lego-guys is a method called rolestorming, which means that we would give the people, who come to the workshops, a certain kind of role. For instance, Jenni, I would tell that you are a 7-year old Somali boy, how would you use this building, and then you would take the Lego and then you would go around the building and kind of, you know, try to understand how it works and then we would learn about this comments and this certain kind of game. Then we execute, and the building looks like this, from last winter. When the park in the front was not completed yet - it's actually just finished now - this park is also result of the involvement of people. It was not in the budget of the city, but from these participatory processes people would be able to convince the city of Helsinki that this park is an integral part of the whole building, the library, youth centre and adult education centre. So, the money was given and now it's done. To me, it's the strongest evidence of the power of the people in this process.

On the right here, there's a direct access to a supermarket where you go to buy your milk bottles and groceries, which is kind of unusual. Usually libraries and this type of common buildings, they are put aside, kind of on a pedestal, they are an important place in the city. They can be detached from your everyday life, but in this case, it was, for us, very important that when you come to buy a bottle of milk it's very easy to come to the library and pick up the latest novel, which you might not do if it was not physically really easy for you to do. When some of the spaces are really quite specifically programmed, like this library hall, then others are not. For instance, the core of the building, which has a double high space with a top light. The whole ground floor is unprogrammed, it houses - you can see there is a piano, which is brought there sometimes for concerts and talks; there's a pop-up café that's been there for now, it's operated by unemployed youth, and that only came in the very late part of the process. Two months before opening they said 'Well, how about having this pop-up café?', so we would quickly arrange what was needed for the pop-up café. It works pretty nicely. Exhibitions are held here and so on. So, in my experience, this building became much better with this process of participation and involvement. We weren't really sure about that when we began, since we were used to designing in a different method, but I do strongly recommend allowing everybody to contribute.

It turns out that I use a lot of the same words that the Mayor was using in her opening speech. Experience is another one, she talked about experience economy. Well, this is definitely a part of that economy. Visitor centre, an exhibition space, an experience space for Fazer, the company that all of you probably know, at least the Finns in the room. It's basically a building where you would come when you come to visit the factory, nowadays it's for many reasons not possible anymore. A few years ago, they arranged an invitational competition, which we won and this is a result of that.

As I said in the beginning, I would try to talk about ways to work in our office. It's always important for us to decide which the key drivers in the process are. If in Maunula it would be the involvement of people, in this case we would say it's really the experience which drives the whole process. That's kind of the common thread in the whole process. So, the building behind is where you come. This project also includes the new headquarters of the company. On the right you see the main entries to the headquarters. But when you come to the visitor centre, the experience itself, it starts already from the outside. The raw materials of the company were kind of raw material for the architecture as well. You come through this garden of different grain, some trees, cherry trees, which are really the raw material of the products they make there, the cookies and the pastries and the chocolate and so on. That continues inside the building. The heart of the building is a greenhouse where, kind of the pièce de résistance of the house, is the cocoa trees. You have vanilla and cinnamon and chili and all kinds of raw materials, and that has to do with experience. Kids love this space. When they go to this small jungle they really are with all their senses open. It's about experience but it's also about education. Even if they’re a commercial company they have a mission in educating kids about healthy food and original food, which are important issues. So, when you see a cocoa tree and you see this yellow, fantastic fruit there you really start to understand where does it come from and what is, for instance the farmers in South America, what is their role in the process and how can you really do it sustainably. The part of the experience is this kind of playfulness. We have this cylindrical, open, flowing space with more solid units, with the entrance facilities, the greenhouse, kitchens for different kind of restaurants, and the experience and exhibition flows around these spaces. An auditorium, and exit through the gift shop, obviously, that's part of the museum design nowadays. But you can do that gift shop in many different ways. In our aim it was to form a kind of coherent experience from start to finish. And that kind of philosophy goes from the whole concept to even the graphics and furniture and so on. We had a great partner here with Ateljé Sotamaa who designed the exhibition design and the graphics. This mignon bunny, for instance, is really quite popular with the visitors and especially with the kids. Today's exhibition is not a passive experience, it's about interactivity, it's about surprise, it's about information, education, and it’s about new technology. Here, for instance, there is a 3D-printer, which brings chocolate, so you can experience what it's like printing, for instance, an Eiffel Tower out of chocolate. The way they do actual factory visits nowadays is with VR-glasses. For hygienic reasons you cannot allow people to the factories anymore, but now with VR-glasses you can really have this immersive experience of being inside a factory.

Yes, in the end, you do visit through the gift shop, but in our perspective the commercial components of the design of the museum, they must be really a part of the story. So, all the furniture, all the architecture, all the displays is coherent with any other part of the building.

In Kuopio, they are building an extension to the museum at this very moment. Unfortunately, not the one that we designed, but we still feel that there is something that we could say with this entry to the invitational competition held two years ago. This has to do with the idea of connecting. If this museum, which is the old museum, in Art Nouveau, or Jugend-style, museum was kind of an introverted castle, if you will. Today's museum is something totally opposite, it is a connector in many ways. It needs to connect to the street life, it needs to connect to whatever assets you have in the urban condition around. For instance, in this particular case, there is the old museum building which is now seamlessly connected to the new part, but more importantly to the City Library. Kind of the same idea we used in Maunula, really to connect and allow different services to blend seamlessly together. At the same time, it's important to respect the layers of architecture in the city. When you extend and change, it's very important to respect the identity of the existing. That goes, obviously, with this listed building, the old museum, but equally the library building adjacent. The streetscape, even if the building itself is kind of common and monolithic, let's say, playing the second fiddle next to the old museum, the big thing is about opening the streetscape to the city.

It's very important to provide all the services, all the back of the stage services, so that they work in a great way, but they don't disturb the experience. So, in this case, underground facilities to provide for the blood circulation of the museum, hidden from the eyes of the visitor and the experience. Of course, part of these can be part of the experience, but not everything. It's important to decide where to be expressive, where to create sensation with your architecture and design and where not to. In our opinion, in this case, kind of the expressive architecture is in the entrances, but they're not in the actual exhibition spaces, which leaves more room for the actual exhibition and the artefacts and the content of the exhibition. For instance, here you could say that this kind of origami concrete is a kind of a contemporary interpretation of the old brick walls in the older part of the museum.

Before the last example I would like to share with you, is a project of revitalization. I know all of you read this week the IPCC reports about climate change, at least I did, in a kind of shocked manner. Of course, the main message in that report is that sustainable development needs to be taken into account in everything we do, in virtually everything. So, one big part of that philosophy is how to relate to the buildings that we already have. Of that method, a good example is the Helsinki Olympic Stadium revitalization, refurbishment and extension which is now undergoing and will be completed in the end of next year. This building we have worked with from 2003, so it's a rather long project. We began with covering the eastern stalls, but now all the spectator stalls are being covered. More than 20,000 new square meters are being built, mostly underground, but at the same time the original character and identity of the Lindgren - Jäntti -architecture prevails. We were told in the beginning of this process that 'Hey guys, it's cheaper and easier to just tear it down and just build a completely new stadium'. Those tones were silenced quite quickly, but some people were really quite serious about this. Of course, this is a very important, symbolical building in Helsinki, and it's important to understand that value in old buildings is not only about economical and material values. It's also, obviously, historical values but cultural values as well. So, it goes the whole way.

It's quite difficult to introduce modern requirements to a building like this, but I think we do manage. This is the canopy from 2005, and this is what is illustrated to be in about a year's time. That's really the most notable change in the spectator stalls. Talking about museums, in a sense the whole Olympic Stadium is a kind of a living museum. There is, as you know, a sports museum as well, which is equally listed. Some small changes are being made, and it will open at the same time with the Olympic Stadium. And the whole stadium will, with this revitalization, be a kind of a living museum for almost any kind of event, not only sports and concerts.

This illustrates to you that, even if you don't see too much - you see the canopies - there's a whole lot going on underground. New sports halls, a lot of technique, which is quite challenging to put into an old concrete building like this. New underground sports halls, a new centre for logistics, which is under this surface in the northern part of Helsinki Stadium, which allows the now service yard to become space for the audience and events. We try to do things in the interior of the stadium in a manner that the new architecture almost disappears. This has been a very important driver in the design. For instance, this is the lobby that leads to the main A-spectator stalls. If you've been there, many of you have been there, you know it really kind of looked like this. Even though the functional changes are quite big, there are a lot of new stairs, new services, new toilets, and new restaurant. We tried to make them disappear in a way that the original character, identity of the stadium from 1938 would be the thing that you still do experience. It's again kind of the same philosophy that I was talking about when I talked about the museum in Kuopio, which was our entry. In this case, for us, it was really important to decide where to be expressive, where to kind of show the contemporary and where not to, where to disappear. I remember Taniguchi, who won the design competition for the New York MoMa extension, and he was talking to the client about his design fee. He said, 'If you give me a good design fee, I will make you a good museum. But if you give me the fee that I want, I will make the museum disappear', which was quite well put in my mind.

To finish, I think in every project you have to start with a white paper and decide which are the ways to work, which are the methods, which are the common threads that you will follow always. We all know how complicated architecture is, the whole project. So, if you don't have these threads you might get lost. These are some of thems that we've been following in these particular projects. Looking forward to finding the next ones, perhaps in Turku or in Helsinki with the museum projects. Thank you.