Männtä, Finland

The Mill and Us

Serlachius Museum Gösta Extension

the vision Looking at the past as a way into the future This is the challenge strikingly posed by the architectural design for the extension to the Gösta Museum which has been tailored to support the ambitious and significant renewal programme for the existing museum complex, transforming it into an integrated and modern system. It has to include within it the spaces and fixtures intended to bring people closer to art, providing an opportunity for its contemplation, study, safeguarding and protection.

Gösta and Ruth Serlachius’s great intuition in the setting up of the Fine Art Foundation, gradually transforming their house into a museum, represents the basic premise and driving force which we believe should continue to inform this design. It translates into the idea that art is an intimate experience for those approaching it, arousing an emotional response, inspiring a deeper contact with one’s self and thus acting as a stimulus for a community’s civil and cultural development. The attention to the human element and the individual members of the Mänttä Community, the people growing up within and around the Serlachius enterprise, is demonstrated by a small but important detail forming part of the life of the business, the retelling of stories taken from workers’ lives which were periodically collected and “saved” in the feature called “Company Family news” published as part of the company publication “The Mill and Us”

Today the museum is a meeting place of even greater intensity. It is a place where we can encounter art, the past, ourselves and others, where a dense network of relations both real and perceptive interweave and become part of us. This is why the planned extension represents an important step forward in the life of the Gösta Museum and why too, the design we have imagined for the new structure represents a radical gesture and new departure. In the same way G Serlachius’s own decision marked a new departure when, in 1868 he identified a place to build his factory then constructing a community and town around it over the years. His successors in the Serlachius family have shown the same energy in carrying forward the productive and civil life of the same community, a spirit now inherited by the Foundation in taking forward the Gösta Museum to face new challenges, opening up with renewed energy onto a more international context.

the place The Joenniemi area is an enchanting place, filled with an array of different elements and allure, in almost perfect equilibrium between the natural (the park, the woods, the lake and island) and the man-made (the villa and its surrounding buildings and the small structures spread throughout the area). The architectural design has been created to fit into this delicate equilibrium, identifying priorities and respecting what is already there but at the same time without pretending that there has been no change. The design team has approached the landscape as a kind of process, operating on it with both sensitivity and decisiveness. We felt that the strength of the setting demanded that any new intervention had itself to be equally clear in its impact.

The building complex and the extensive functional plan indeed, extends over an area of about 5000 square metres. Notwithstanding its great size, we have sought to establish a new synthesis and interaction between the different parts, generating a new and fertile interplay between the architecture of the past and the present and between art and the natural landscape, each part respecting and enhancing the other. For the location of the museum account has thus been taken of the larger free area, that on the eastern side of the park entrance and thus ensuring, as an essential principle, the greatest conservation of existing trees and the best possible future use of the park. Furthermore, the position chosen does not compromise the pre-eminent role of the existing villa looking out onto the park and south towards the lake for which it remains a reference point. Indeed, the extended volumes we have imagined for the enlargement enhance the route to the museum, their long walls accompanying the pathway leading from the square opposite the villa onto which the museum’s new entrance hall will open.

The extension will be close to the villa’s main structure so that the new entrance hall appears as a central junction between the new museum exhibits and the connection with the exhibition halls within the villa itself. Then there is a space which has been left free, of the same width as the portico on the opposite, western side, imparting a virtual symmetry to the villa (as in Jarl Eklund’s original conception) as well as a kind of breathing space between the main structures. The internal connection between the entrance hall of the extension and the villa is in the form of a first floor passage leading directly to its piano nobile. This means it does not have to cross the route to be taken by the public through the museum while at the same time avoiding other alternative pathways through dark and depressing spaces such as the semi-basement. Finally, on the south side, the museum’s overall shape has been adapted to run parallel with the diagonal described by the route running from the villa towards Taavetinsaari, at the same time opening onto the view of the island and its surroundings.

the concept The new museum structure is the result of the bringing together of the volumes in which the various functional units are housed (exhibition facilities, collections’ treatment, space for service functions and offices), each characterised by its own plans and dimensions. The precise satisfaction of lighting requirements together with thermal and hydrometric parameters of the different environments, the need for them to be able to encompass flexible and autonomous use and to cater for the possibility of opening to the public at times when the museum is closed, have all been achieved by the separation of the various activities into semi-autonomous blocks, connected by a single internal route. The arrangement of these blocks has not been left to chance, it has indeed, been planned with care in order to generate a dynamic and vibrant whole, aimed at creating a specific impression to visitors.

The design team has consistently given priority to the idea of the museum being a “house for people” before it is a “house for pictures”. Since people are to be the future users of the different spaces, people and their perceptions have always been at the centre of the design concept. The team has thus sought a sequence of spaces which alternate between those providing an excellent and undisturbed view of the art-works and those looking out onto the surrounding countryside, an essential and characterising ingredient of the museum itself. It is precisely the arrangement of the different functional blocks which generates the empty spaces making up the internal courtyards and the pattern of deep incisions into the edge of the building. The main body of the building extends and contracts to include and absorb fragments of nature and planted areas within its overall shape, generating at the same time both luminous spaces and attractive views (often nature appears more surprising if seen through the frame of a window or filtered by a portico). All dimensions of the museum are kept to a human scale. It is almost all laid out on a single floor (with the exception of the office and depot block and the route to the villa. This means that the way round the museum is all on one level which is sloping in parts, following the morphology of the site, facilitating management activities while also making it easier and more comfortable for the visiting public to use and enjoy.

Europaconcorsi Beta

The Mill and Us