The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation announced today that 1,715 confirmed submissions have been received in response to Stage One of the open, anonymous, international, two-stage competition for the design of a proposed Guggenheim museum in the Finnish capital of Helsinki. The submissions represent the largest number of entries recorded for a competition of this kind, surpassing the 2002 competition for the Grand Egyptian Museum, which received 1,557 entries, and the largest architectural competition in Helsinki, for the Helsinki Central Library, which attracted 544 entries in 2012.
Stage One of the competition was open to qualified architects, including people who have professional degrees in architecture—either individuals or teams—from anywhere in the world. Anonymous submissions were due September 10, 2014, and were received from 77 countries, according to voluntary data provided by 70 percent of competitors. The United States, Italy, Finland, the United Kingdom, France, and Japan represent the top six countries from which submissions were received.
Launched on June 4 and 5 with events in Helsinki and at the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Guggenheim Helsinki Design Competition is a first for the Guggenheim, which has not previously sought a museum design through an open competition. It also marks a key milestone in the Guggenheim’s long engagement with architecture and design, which includes landmark buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright and Frank Gehry as well as a first-of-its-kind, mobile, carbon-fiber structure by Atelier Bow-Wow created for the BMW Guggenheim Lab, a pioneering global initiative that took the Guggenheim’s educational mission into the streets of New York, Berlin, and Mumbai with free public programming and city projects related to issues of urban life.
