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New Oulu Museum and Science Center

Location: Oulu, Finland

Date: Jun 2022 - Jam 2023

Typology: Culture, Landscape

Size: 6.275 sqm

Status: International Competition

Client: The City of Oulu, Finnish Association of Architects.

Collaborators:

A new transformed and reinterpreted box that shelters the old, transforming and delimiting the urban space.

The city of Oulu wants a new museum, an international space that meets the programmatic needs of the city and that brings together and completes the current state of its cultural institutions. This fact leads us to reflect on the importance that a museum space has today in the 21st century. Museums are no longer mere exhibitors of information, but are increasingly based on an active learning system in which the user is a full participant. For this reason, it is intended to create a living element, which not only serves as a storage and exhibition system for objects and information, but also as a space that acts as a cultural relationship between society. A space that interrelationships, not only. Visitors from all over the world, if not act as a union and consolidation of the entire urban area where it is located.

Exterior view

The project is based on the creation of a massive element which rearranges the neighborhood where it is located. It is not based on an implantation in a residual space, but with its precise insertion in the plot, it rearranges the adjoining spaces, giving it greater urban planning and creating new access flows. Therefore, the building acts as an organizational element for the different types of traffic in the area and gives the neighborhood greater institutional solemnity.

At first glance, the problem to solve may seem simple, where the existence of a consolidated building with a high degree of conservation must be expanded physically and spatially, in order to satisfy the logistical and programmatic needs that a science museum such as this needs. But the question is not how to make this union between two volumetric pieces of different building typology, if not, what do you want to achieve with this new museum.

Exterior view

Therefore, we will not base ourselves on the creation of an aluso element that is linked in one way or another to the current building, but we are going to look for the way in which the two buildings act as a unique institutional unit of social value. to the city of Oulu. And it is precisely here, where the differentiation between other museum expansions or new museums that have been carried out over the years resides.

Interior view

Interior view

Interior view

A hermetic box on all sides, positioned in one place and with very concise measurements, will make this new project for the city of Oulu, that necessary social revaluation for the area.

Aerial view

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