As a response to the 2011 Kirjava Satama competition to re-envision Helsinki’s South Harbour, this project explores edge inhabitation potential.  In an effort to engage citizens with the landscape, the major development of the urban intervention is a museum along the western bank, bridging Observatory Park with the city center and market square.  The linear organization of the building activates the edge through stepped roof plazas and ramped circulation that leads pedestrians along the water and through the transition from the natural world to the urban.  

This hybrid science center/museum seeks to highlight the geology and natural history of Finland alongside environmental art in order to emphasize the accessibility and poetics of science. Through coupling education, recreation, and art, the interactive museum fosters an awareness of environmentally based causes and effects.  Environmental art seeks to recombine existing environments and natural materials into installations that symbolize the possibilities for reshaping our world.  The demystification of science, specifically related to the natural world, is essential for a far-reaching reevaluation of modern behavior and approaches to industry, and the museum itself functions as environmental art, embedded into the geology with which it interacts and reveals.