REVIEW OF: "THE HELSINKI EFFECT: PUBLIC ALTERNATIVES TO THE GUGGENHEIM MODEL OF CULTURE-DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT"

By Annette Koh

The Guggenheim Effect is an urbanist fairy tale about how a starchitect-designed museum transformed a sleepy backwater into a celebrated global destination. In this story, architect Frank Gehry’s undulating design for Bilbao’s Guggenheim museum jolted Bilbao out of post-industrial doldrums by garnering international acclaim and drawing an influx of tourists and investment.

The Helsinki Effect: Public Alternatives to the Guggenheim Model of Culture-Driven Development punctures the prevailing mythology through a case study of the failed 2011 proposal for a Guggenheim branch in Helsinki, Finland. Edited by Finnish artist Terike Haapoja, American cultural studies scholar Andrew Ross, and the much-missed Michael Sorkin, the book is an accessible antidote for all those entranced by fantasies of a “world-class” museum catalyzing urban revitalization. Divided into an essay section and a design proposal section, the book fuses together critique with practice to answer the “clear need for alternatives to… blockbuster design.” [1]

The eight contributors to Part One launch a far-ranging interdisciplinary critique of the multi-scalar origins, logics and processes of exploitation embedded within the mega-museum franchise. Curator Juhani Pallasma begins with the key premises and problematics of the proposed Helsinki Guggenheim, with attention to its discursive, aesthetic aspects. The essays include reflections by collaborators from Checkpoint Helsinki arts coalition and the New York City-based G.U.L.F. collective – founded to challenge worker abuse in the Abu Dhabi Guggenheim construction.

The second half of The Helsinki Effect features a kaleidoscopic set of creative possibilities generated by the Next Helsinki counter-competition organized in 2014 and 2015 by several of the book’s contributors. The compiled proposals vary wildly in approach, but all seek to reinterpret the museum as an institution and redefine culture within urban space…