The new building for the University of the Arts (Uniarts) Helsinki, the Academy of Fine Arts, provides students and staff with exceptional facilities for tuition and making art within an architecturally distinct building. The architecture and the interior architecture celebrate the imaginative integration of existing structures and pays homage to the history of Sörnäinen, a post-industrial neighbourhood buzzing today with young urban life. 

Designed by JKMM, the ingenuity of the makerspace lies in offering students of fine arts, lighting and sound design and design for the performing arts generous, muscular, well-lit, and clearly defined spaces. The communal and modifiable interior architecture will lend itself to a variety of uses for creating and experiencing a wide range of art forms, using different media, and working on scales from the intimate to the imposing. The design is thus there to enable rather than restrict creative endeavour. 

To future-proof the building so it serves generations, JKMM has thought carefully about its supporting structures and their longevity. These have been minimised through load-bearing facades and a rational slab-column frame which will greatly facilitate change of use, if required, in years to come. Fair-faced concrete and steel surfaces and overall material choices have been specified for longevity and ease of maintenance. “For interiors and furniture design we selected materials that work well within an old industrial setting and can withstand substantial wear and tear. Fittings are largely made of hard-wearing timber that also ages beautifully. 

At the same time, wood provides a welcome contrast to the concrete and steel surfaces”, describes the project’s lead interior architect Päivi Meuronen. “We felt that the building should really embrace in an inspiring way the energy of student life and the process of art being made”, defines Meuronen. From the very start back in 2017 when JKMM won the project, an important aspect of the brief was to create a local resource that brought researchers and makers of art together and made it accessible to the general public as well: an arts building with a gallery and programme embedded within its community.

Uniarts Helsinki’s Academy of Fine Arts has been designed as a direct response to the needs of future visionaries providing generous contemporary makerspace with the latest technologies. With its raw surfaces and sense of spatial and experiential adventure, this is a building budding artists can respond to, challenge imaginatively and make their own.