Nordicum - Real Estate Annual Finland 2019 | Page 51

Going Deep
The entrance to Amos Rex is through Lasi-
palatsi (“glass palace”), a distinguished
1930s Functionalist pavilion comprising
restaurants, shops, the Bio Rex cinema and
an open square behind it. All the newbuild
gallery spaces of Amos Rex, however, are
underground.
“It was really the only viable option
for us to go underground,” explains Jaaksi.
JKMM worked with the City planners
to determine how Lasipalatsi Square would
remain as an important civic space within
Helsinki while also allowing the public to
enjoy Amos Rex’s only visible new built
elevation, its roofscape. The solution came
in the form of highly sculptural roof lights
that also address the challenge of bringing
daylight into the subterranean exhibition
spaces. The roof lights create a new topog-
raphy, their gently rolling forms playing on
the idea of an urban park in keeping with
the integrity of the square.
“This way we’re not totally filling up
the square with new construction, and, on
the other hand, are letting people know of
the museum’s existence in some manner,”
Jaaksi says.
Let There Be Light
Inside the gallery spaces, visitors looking up
to the generous steel-framed concrete sky-
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