Inside the National Museum of Finland’s once-in-a-generation refresh in Helsinki
Wallpaper | 18.06.2026 11:00
The National Museum of Finland in Helsinki was always supposed to be expanded, says Samuli Miettinen, founding partner of JKMM Architects and lead designer of the museum’s gleaming new extension due to be inaugurated in spring 2027. Even the famous architect trio of Herman Gesellius, Armas Lindgren and Eliel Saarinen, who designed the original museum, which was completed in 1916 and built in the National Romantic Style, had 'drawn plans to expand the wings and add a courtyard,' he explains. There were other projects too, including a brutalist architecture extension by prominent Finnish architect Aarno Ruusuvuori in the mid-1980s, Miettinen continues, but the resources and capital were never there, and the plans floundered.
