The project of a museum based on a submarine at the Fourth Dimension architectural bureau was made for two competitions at once. The first was announced by the Solomon Guggenheim Foundation and invited architects around the world to come up with an image of a new museum, which the foundation plans to build in Helsinki as a new easily recognizable and identifiable symbol of the city. The second, completely unexpected and not entirely architectural, international competition The Submarine, organized by the matterbetter team, aimed participants to adapt and propose a new function for the Russian Typhoon-class nuclear submarine - the largest nuclear submarine ever built. In 2013, the Russian government announced that two such submarines would be decommissioned due to their high maintenance costs and outdated equipment. The organizers of the competition plan to transform one of the submarines into some kind of peaceful object.
The competitions were held almost simultaneously, and the architects decided to combine the two tasks by proposing to use a submarine to create a museum of contemporary art.
The Guggenheim Foundation's competition was probably the loudest and most popular of the past year, attracting 1,715 entries from 77 countries. According to the assignment, the museum should be built near the historical center of the city, but already outside the zone of its influence. Around there is a homogeneous and unimpressive building: a plot allocated for construction on the embankment is adjacent to port warehouses and a cargo terminal. There is a large city park across the road. The Cathedral and the Assumption Cathedrals are nearby: their silhouettes clearly dominate the northern panoramas of the port. In the foreground, on the embankment, a museum should appear, according to the authors, taking on the role of a bright memorable architectural and artistic accent and forming a new visual center of attraction. The situation also clearly suggests a connection between the embankment and the park, their symbiosis will logically expand the green recreational area and connect the park with the busy harbor.
The combination of the most complex structure, created at the forefront of the most advanced achievements of science and technology, with the idea of enlightenment and modern art, in sum, gives an exceptional art object. The authors believe that the submarine's impressive volume in all respects can become the main part of the museum and at the same time its exhibit. The philosophy of the textbook museum space as a "case building" is being transformed, the space is revealed both inward and outward, the submarine, by its very presence, enriches the semantic content and at the same time becomes a bright, memorable accent in the sea facade of the city.
According to the authors, such an art object is guaranteed to attract the attention of citizens and tourists. One of the authors of the project, Vsevolod Medvedev, says: “There are already Guggenheim museums in New York and Bilbao. It seemed to us wrong and almost impossible to compete with the already created masterpieces of world architecture in terms of shaping. We decided to take a different path, trying to impress the inhabitants of Helsinki not from a purely architectural point of view, but above all from an emotional point of view: a museum in the form of a submarine is both unusual and attractive."
Having studied the site proposed for design, the architects found that the length of the boat exactly corresponded to the dimensions of the designated area, and the location of the future museum on the very shore of the harbor allows the boat to be freely moved to the desired place on its own. As a result, an image of a ship swiftly sailed to the embankment, from the approach of which a steep wave rose to the shore - more precisely, an elegantly curved block of glass "ice", appropriate in a northern climate (although the bay does not freeze). Inside the "wave", the architects placed all the main premises of the museum: exhibition spaces, storage, congress hall, cafes, shops. The boat itself is located outside, behind a curtain of "smart" glass, which changes its transparency according to a specific program.
Entering the museum through the main entrance, visitors find themselves in a large atrium inside the "wave". From here, through the glass facade, a panorama of the city opens, and much closer, close, directly behind the curtain of the "wave", hangs the body of the boat, illusory blurred, being in its element, in the thick of water.
All exhibition spaces of the museum are built so that the visitor can move between the boat and the spacious enfilades of the "wave", which makes the route varied and completely unpredictable: the cramped and closed rooms of the submarine are replaced by spacious, brightly lit halls, and then again, gliding along a sine wave, are included in the ship's compartments. The boat is inextricably linked with the volume of the building by a complex system of ramps and pedestrian bridges piercing the atrium and spreading from one deck to another. Three decks are transformed into three exhibition floors. As a result, 2,400 m fit inside the boat.2 exhibition space, that is, about 20% of the required museum area.
The submarine is raised from the ground on supports, which makes it possible to directly connect the interior of the museum with the comfortable embankment, the exit to which is carried out from the lobby - the zone of cafes and souvenir shops.
One of the most important tasks that the architects faced was to change the perception of the boat as a military object. The solution turned out to be simple and effective: the hull of the boat in the project was painted with a northern neutral national ornament, completely getting rid of the gloomy aggressive black color. Dressed in shades of blue, the boat lost its aggressiveness and became not like a military submarine, but like a fabulous flying attraction ship. But the authors did not stop there: according to the plan, the entire surface of the ship was to become a huge interactive media screen with all sorts of lighting effects and a constant change of light scenes.
One of the most important and life-affirming thoughts that the authors wanted to reflect in the project is the fact that a formidable and perfect lethal weapon, which at some point represents the pinnacle of the development of human engineering thought aimed at destruction, eventually becomes an object of enlightenment. culture and art, becomes a monument and inspiring way, illustrating the true direction of progress as a process of creation and knowledge of the world.
Of course, there was little hope that such a museum project would be noticed among almost two thousand other works. The finalists of the competition were named in November, and there was no Fourth Dimension among them. But in the second competition, where it was about a submarine, the project entered the top five, thereby confirming both the originality of the idea and the high quality of execution.
