Mad, bad, and sad – just a road in Pasila

Dear reader,

Do you recall JHJ getting rather hot under the collar about the comprehension-defying prospect of a new major road flooding Helsinki’s lovely peninsula with ever more cars? About a year ago on this very blog?

Driving a massive road through an as-yet-unbuilt residential area is crazy on any number of grounds. Articulate critical voices in the blogosphere and even, amazingly, on the letters page of Helsingin Sanomat on 16.4.2013 have made that much clear.

Blog posts today, e.g. here and here, indicate that friends of progressive transport planning in Helsinki are simply dumbfounded.

Trailing behind everyone else once again, Helsinki is about to build a brand new road including an enormous underpass. Nothing of this scale exists here yet.

Where such massive underpasses for cars do exist, they tend to be liked by drivers (from other places) in a hurry. Most other people fear and loathe them. Some cities are turning them back into useful spaces for real people, reconnecting neighbourhoods that were earlier disconnected by … er… roads like the proposed Veturitie.

And this also feels like a grim day for democracy in Helsinki. As massive a road as this in this place, with its patchwork of land ownership, and with the superlative-defying monetary, spatial and human resources that are being poured into the vast “regeneration exercise” of which it is a part, must have been pushed through the system (even in as complacent a city as Helsinki) by dedicated and big-stakes behind-the-scenes horsetrading.

Unfortunately, unlike at, say King’s Cross in London, where local residents took up arms and waged battles for years and years, here Helsinki’s planners and politicians are in the fortunate position (disastrous for future generations as it may be) of working in an area that is almost tabula rasa.

Mad, bad and sad.

 

Sceneries of Helsinki – Adieu on this snowy Independence Day

If you are interested in how ideals congeal into matter, and if you appreciate that a seven-storey building can be “human-sized”, do come and visit Helsinki.

But whether you’re here or just planning a visit, make sure to enjoy it before it’s too late. The “pressure” to build (particularly on the water) is producing a stunning list of new and attractive opportunities for the building sector. The Planning Department’s webpage contains so much architectural and planning dross it makes me weep.

From redesigning the rural idylls of Östersundom and the fast-growing suburbs to the east, to the bombastic dullness of the other so-called New Helsinki zones, up the high-rise-hotel (a new symbol for Helsinki?!) on the western edge of the peninsula, and down to the wrangle over a helicopter pad in Hernesaari … our enormous Planning Department must be a hive of activity.

Presumably everywhere architecture and construction have sped up through computer-aided technology and politics-to-suit-the-rich. The craze for big and showy in Helsinki is also capitalizing on the genuine problem that Helsinki’s land-use is wasteful by European standards (as even Wikipedia will tell you). So as they turn over more and more of the city to speculative building, the usual suspects (Kokoomus politicians like young Mr Männistö who heads the planning committee, for example) have at their disposal a machine more powerful than ever with which to smother the city with monuments to today’s impatient capitalism, but also a vaguely green-sounding argument for building high.

Can protesters and activists keep up? They are beginning to try. Some have stepped up their campaigns with letters to the planning department and to editors (if you have access to Helsingin Sanomat you can follow an interesting exchange here), and with new websites and blogs.

Perhaps the new little exhibition at the Architecture Museum, Unbuilt Helsinki, is also a kind of protest. Maybe. I’d describe it as difficult art. But it is based on a larger, longer project that might yield some stories yet, about how the choices were once made that created the city we  still love.

Is there any point in trying to resist? Haven’t the rich always shaped the city?

Probably. But I can’t believe the rich have always been this stupid or careless. In this little gem of a city we appear to have rich folks who can’t distinguish a fine skyscraper from an a architectural erectile dysfunction.

And, to give me the excuse to share this bit of silliness (below), Helsinki’s rich presumably also think a good evening’s eating out might have some connection to forest sceneries. I think, Helsinki, we have a massive problem on our hands.

If, dear reader, you have any thoughts on the design of future Helsinki that haven’t been taken up on this blog, or that should be taken in new directions, I’d love to know. The thing is, I’m not going away, but I think this blog should now wind up. It’s time for something more serious.

Thank you so much for reading. JHJ.

International pants (make that under-pants)

Helsinki is once again smothered in darkness. It is November, after all, a month whose Finnish name carries traces of the word “death” (a hunch corroborated by wiktionary).

Silly schemes for extracting financial value out of filling in the city’s breathing spaces with mediocre junk, continue to grace headlines. Shopping centres in the burbs, shopping centres in “town”, road schemes, helicopter pads (sufficiently far from residential areas, you’ll be pleased to hear), luxury developments on the waterside, cheaper developments on the waterside, hotels and sports stadia, crimes against local forests (once again it’s time to write to your councillor about Meri-Rastila) etc. etc.

Justice, activists in Helsinki are saying, is eluding them. (But will they really rise up and protest, that is the question.)

Could this be because so many Helsinki planners and developers appear to be in thrall to New York City? (Or just money? Ed.) Many certainly appear to think Helsinki’s role model should be New York City. You know, not Madison Square Garden but er… that Helsinki Garden.

A great city, New York, despite the way its soul – in the shape of the spaces that make real life possible – is being shredded by the life-shy super-rich (Michael Sorkin’s account is to be recommended). Although super-storm Sandy may have changed the world, we hope New York’s confidence and can-do mentality will not be permanently affected by it.

But one thing is certain. The idea of Helsinki copying New York urban planning solutions, whether old or young, is, well, it’s pants.

As pants as this building spotted in a Daily M**l story about China. Which really is pants!

Day days

“Dayday is a day when anyone can create a day for a day”.

It was only a matter of time before some joker posted this one on facebook. Not least because last weekend’s effort at another “day” in Helsinki, certainly in Töölö, felt a bit contrived. Cleaning day is nice but it’s nice too to walk in the park, take the boat out, head out to the mökki.

Seems some Helsinkians are exhausted after a summer of running from one pop-up event to another. Perhaps they’re even wondering why they’ve turned into producers as well as consumers, prosumers, of urban culture.

We now create our own “content”, we even take part in  planning [can we check this? Ed], and we are told to set up our own businesses rather than relax lazily into lifetime jobs.

Yet it’s a stretch just to get the kids to school and find time to talk to the spouse – though Finns do work shorter hours than most. Still, we can forget the lazy Sunday afternoon – those over-equipped little leagues filled that slot long ago.

So it might be time that that the experts who get paid for their trouble took a bit more seriously their role in “content creation”.

Sure, we like public participation though it has its troubles. But we still/also have some seriously crap planning. Regular readers, and anyone with an interest in Helsinki’s construction projects, know this.

The latest bit of annoying planning in Helsinki concerns the railway warehouse in Vallila/Pasila. Though it’s nice that the interesting building is to remain intact externally.

And it’s nice that the Teollisuuskatu area – which is in danger of becoming a strip-mall-type insertion into the otherwise liveable (but only after popular struggle!) urban surroundings of wooden Vallila and properly dense Kallio – will become a place of work as well as of sleep.

It seems the “choice raisin in the bun” is to be carved out of the wider former railway lands and given (almost) away by VR in unceremonious haste, when a better negotiated and more encompassing planning deal or masterplan would surely be worth it and possible.

OK, many of us are upset because this means that the one genuinely multicultural venue near central Helsinki, Valtteri’s flea-market, will have to go. Why couldn’t the entire area be developed into a mix of homes, workplaces and a fleamarket that attracts a solid crowd three days a week?

It’s not too late to comment on the plans. (Visit the usual site and scroll down to Aleksis Kiven katu). But it would have been good to get in there earlier. Maybe we’ve just been too busy doing day-days to notice what’s being done in our name.

Pierre Huyghe. Streamside Day – One Year Celebration. Contemporary Art Collection ”la Caixa” Foundation. CaixaForum Barcelona

The Great Transformation

So long, summer. Hello electioneering. We hope.

Municipal elections are on 28 October and, gratefully, the Great Transformation is at least somewhere on the agenda.

By Great Transformation I’m not talking about the shift from a kind of all-round existence to the market fundamentalism most of us now take for granted. (See Karl Polanyi’s great book of that name for that story.)

Nor am I talking about the great climate transformation that this blind fundamentalism has brought with it. (Check out George Monbiot’s text about that here).

I am of course talking about New Helsinki and all the stray bits and pieces of urban development going on around it.

Did I say development? Slip of the keys.

At the small scale Helsinki is, and is likely to remain, wonderful. At the bigger scale, well, watch out and invite your friends to visit soon. Something big and ugly is expected near here soon.

Almost whichever way you look, the Helsinki Planning Department is getting a lot wrong. It makes room for cars not people, that is, for cars, not people. It plans to chop down forests where it doesn’t need to. It drives big roads into the city centre. It plans for megamalls instead of local shops. Perhaps it’s even opening the door to mediocre and anti-social architecture. (Surely not!)

It wants to build high and although plenty of people and quite a few bloggers are aghast, I have yet to find anyone who believes the madness could actually be stopped.

Saying “no” or looking for alternatives to “the authorities” perhaps doesn’t come naturally to Finns. (See here for a relevant and nice Finnish piece on the topic).

New Yorkers had been saying “no” with a vengeance since the 1960s and the prickly, saintly Jane Jacobs. Even in Stockholm there must have been critical voices over the years, since nothing like the high-going hubris of Sergels Torg has ever been allowed (at least near the centre) since that went up in the 1950s.

JHJ and friends are grateful to those who are doing something to be constructively critical, e.g. here, here and here. (This last link gets in because before the Töölönlahti moonlight swim of a few nights ago – where ordinary folks protested/rejoiced in the bay with their bodies – Peltsi Peltonen made an impassioned speech on behalf of the sea and against business-as-usual that was music to JHJ’s critique-starved ears.)

Looking forward then to urban planning inching its way onto the political agenda.

Exhausting and frustrating

Many of us consider tweeting and hanging out on facebook to be work, and for most Finns at least, reading a newspaper, on-line or on-paper, is second nature. (At least it was until Helsingin Sanomat began so unashamedly to do politics that many people have stopped following it).

But at times like these, a news blackout would be bliss. Keeping up is exhausting and frustrating!

The troublesome G-issue just will not go away. Until it does, anyone who cares about the future of Helsinki, particularly Katajanokka and the South Harbour, won’t sleep too soundly.

The last few days have been a circus of news, opinion pieces, letters to editors, fb-updates and spoofs that, despite their number and their often colourful language, possibly fail to do justice to what is going on.

Many a man with power really, really wants Helsinki to collaborate with the New York based Guggenheim bränd. Day by day Helsinkians become more wary, while proponents’ arguments become more pompous and over-optimistic. Alexander Stubb, the popular minister, would like to see a landmark in Helsinki to rival the Eiffel Tower… Emeritus professor Y. Sotamaa says “do not be afraid” (letter to HS editor today).

Given this I wonder how Helsinki has survived as the liveable city it has!

And I realise that were it not for active citizens, “les trente glorieuses” and the fine buildings that that period of capitalist history bequeathed to us, would long ago have been replaced by some form of neo-feudal horror. Were it not for critical thinkers, there would be urban unhappiness so startling that even the naive optimists and the cossetted rich would see it.

JHJ’s view is that unless one keeps one’s eyes closed and imagination switched off, one must know that cities are in crisis. (The brand new tome, Cities for People, Not for Profit edited by Brenner, Marcuse and Mayer looks like a good up-to-date take on this. Later…)

Selling the family jewels – e.g. handing over that plot in Katajanokka to a global franchise – is not be the answer to such crises. Besides Helsinki’s track record with making international deals is not good, as reported here, in English.

In search of alternatives, Helsinki’s Occupy camp is still there, tiny but full of sisu. When it comes to the Guggenheim, citizens are turning with anger and energy to more conventional tactics.

Using HS, a number of arts professionals have criticised the rush and warned that embracing the Guggenheim will serve neither Helsinki as a city nor Finland’s visual arts. If anyone should be a partner, why not Paris’ Louvre, asks Maritta Pitkänen 19.1.2012.

Nils Torvalds, (relation of Mr Linux) also offers sage warnings. The bafflement of the troika Rossi, Kivirinta, Johansson, arises out of impeccable (international) credentials in arts management. They note, among other things:

Museokokoelmat ovat osa kulttuurista muistia, ja on surullista huomata, miten yliolkaisesti Helsingin oman museon johto ylipäänsä suhtautuu kokoelmakysymykseen. [Museum collections are part of cultural memory, and it is sad to note how nonchalantly the leadership of Helsinki's own museum approaches the question of collections in general.] HS 19.1.2012

If our money is spent on a Guggenheim, will cosmopolitan Finnish artists like Jorma Puranen or any of the others from the Helsinki School not face more icy prospects?

And if a global blockbuster exhibition were to come here, would it invigorate or emaciate?

But oh, if this were the only problem.

Questions about Janne Gallen-Kallela Siren’s connections to the Guggenheim’s board have been dealt with. But his leadership of the City Art Museum has taken an odd turn. According to reports he is about to go on holiday.

Also…

Before any decisions have been made in any public bodies – the Guggenheim not qualifying – the Museum’s staff have received an announcement that “yt-neuvottelut”, perhaps best translated as restructuring negotiations, are on their way. The reason given for the surprise announcement? The imminent impact of the Guggenheim!

Exhausted, frustrated – and stunned.

Faking it in Helsinki (longest post yet – sorry)

I had a very lovely Helsinki day today.

I went, among other places, to Munkkivuori, home to one of the most pleasant of Helsinki’s ostaris, its suburban-shopping-centres (which isn’t to ignore that Munkkivuori is a relatively urban exemplar of the type). It’s still busy and there was seasonally appropriate indoor market activity in the non-space left by the metro-plans that never materialised.

No doubt the good people of Munkkiniemi help keep the shops alive. Here, a sunny mid-day in that august part of Helsinki, the sun just scraping it through to people in the middle of the day.

As the number 14 bus made its leisurely but direct way past Munkkiniemi to more central locations, I almost felt like this was the Helsinki I used to know, before I left – whenever that was, 15, 20, 25, 36 years ago, depending on how I count it.

Helsinki, as now elderly relatives once taught me, has much to offer, particuarly if you are attentive. There are and have long been, things to notice and cherish as events, people, natural features and seasonal variation.

Look around and chances are there’s something architecturally interesting and rewarding. For me an unexciting but wonderful starter on the route of the number 14 is the magnificent Elanto co-op residential block (number 29 on this map) on the corner of Runeberginkatu and Caloniuksenkatu. Not far there’s the serene urbanity of the so-called Sonck block with its interconnected courtyards and happy residents.

This rather rubbish phone-photo with the block in the distance shows (OK, suggests) just how happy a result those old engineer-types managed to engineer with their strict building regs. (Taken at 12.13 on December 3rd, 2011).

It also demonstrates an important fact about Helsinki life.

Light. It comes at odd angles. Sometimes it comes very rarely. Sometimes it doesn’t come at all. For weeks.

In those difficult moments some of us Helsinkians resort to carbon-hungry but Vitamin-D-rich beach holidays far, far away. Some of us (also) resort to remedies that come in bottles, of alcohol or other drugs, such as this quaintly named product so popular in Finland: Minisun.

And many of us appreciate, explicitly and openly, the sky we see through the trees and above the roof-tops and over the open spaces that adorn our beautiful home.

Recently we here at JHJ have also discovered a way of dealing with the dark. We trick our bodies into believing we are … somewhere else. That is to say, somewhere on a latitude where elsewhere on this weirdly wonderful planet people ever considered it worthwhile trying to build cities.

The point being that Oslo, Helsinki and St Petersburg are oddities. Only due to the ruggedness of their inhabitants and thanks to a little help from Mother Nature, have so many big things been built here. Over in Canada things look very different. (Having said that, entrepreneurial regional governance 1950s-style seems to have helped the Norwegians along, just as it did the Finns.)

So, Helsinki is survivable if you have the right insulation, sensible footwear, long johns, all-in-ones for small children, cars for fussy types and even under-pavement heating for wearers of nice Italian shoes etc. etc.

But nothing – as yet – has been found to make a serious impact on the lack of light. In fact, it’s more than likely that climate change is increasing the number of overcast days already.

And may the gods save us from another winter of no snow: no fun, no beauty, no winter.

Can the artificial life help? Is artificial light the answer? Well, it helps. Rather than the full-whack (not to mention the light-emitting ear-plugs!!), our household went for the bird-song-accompanied fixture that may have (temporarily) redeemed the reputation of gadgets in this household.

I mostly agree with Victor Papanek who wrote sagely in the early 1980s that people “curse the appliances and gadgets that clutter our lives and that seem to wear out at nearly the same rate as the warranty”. I make an exception when it comes to gadgets that make living through Helsinki winters a little more palatable – (fake) daylight and “natural wake-up sounds” instead of the brutal brrrrrringg of an alarm clock. Well done Philips!

Now among the other things that now-elderly relatives taught us to value and develop further were pragmatic and everyday bits of design and problem-solving. Some Finns seem to think these are unique to our race but as a nomad of sorts I know differently.

Still, I do like the making do and mending of my country folk just as much as I enjoy the quasi-craft skills one needs to enjoy a mökki holiday or to bake a really pretty joulutorttu, and I appreciate the user-friendliness of a Fiskars knife and I really love not having to choose between too-hot and too-cold taps as I did in the UK. I also love the way Finnish bars and cafes provide blankets for outdoor seating. Some also add those horrid patio heaters to them but many do not. And this is what I consider a sane adaptation to living at the same latitude as Canada’s Hudson’s Bay.

Which brings me to the news.

Last week’s City of Helsinki tall buildings report is still, unsurprisingly, mostly unread. A number of, mostly unhappy, responses have been published in The Usual (pay-to-view), including today.

Jätkäsaaressa kerroskorkeuden saneli norjalainen kiinteistösijoittaja Arthur Buchardt. Kun alueen asemakaava vahvistettiin pari vuotta sitten, kerroksia oli “vain” 16, nyt esitetään, että niitä olisi 34. Virkamiehet perustelevat Buchardtin sanoneen, että jos hän ei saa rakentaa korkeaa tornihotellia, hän ei rakenna ollenkaan. Yleensä tällaista perustelua käyttävät pikkulapset.

or

In Jätkäsaari the number of floors was dictated by the Norwegian investor Arthur Buchardt. When the area’s local plan (asemakaava) was adopted a couple of years ago there were “only” 16 floors, now the proposal is for 34. Council officers reason that Buchardt has said that if he should not get a tall hotel-tower he won’t build at all. Usually this kind of reasoning is used by little children.

So writes Harri Hautajärvi, former editor of Ark, signing off as an “architect who has seen enough (small) towns haphazardly splintered by skyscrapers”.

And to link this back to the point about living at these latitudes, he also notes:

Tornihankkeiden mallinnuskuvat ovat kiiltokuvamaisen kauniita. Päiväsaikaan todellisuudessa tummina näkyvät lasitalot on esitetty vaaleina. Pilvenpiirtäjien ympärilleen langettamaa varjostusta on selvitetty hyvin tarkoitushakuisesti.

as in

The tower schemes’ renderings are picture-pretty. Glass buildings that in reality appear dark in the daylight are represented in pale shades. The shadows thrown around them by the skyscrapers have been demonstrated most tendentiously.

Meanwhile Arkkivahti is also keeping watch over architecture threatened by the needs of luxury tourism, along with amenity societies and residents’ associations no doubt soon to be accused of NIMBYism around the wealthier and perhaps even less wealthy parts of our fair city.

p.s. the Kämp on Esplanadi has a rubbish reputation. Not a very good price-quality-ratio as we say.

Everything is possible

There are so many ways that cities could be more constructively used than they are these days. Nobody would presumably sit down and plan for metal cows to hog as much of the eye-level, human-scale space as cars do in contemporary Helsinki. Nobody would intentionally stick long ribbons of 60 metre-wide asphalt all around our workplaces and our homes. (I would check this. Ed.)

On the other hand, there are areas that used to be parkland or field, which many consider to be in better, more constructive use, as offices, laboratories and information centres. A good case in point is Helsinki’s Viikki. Like so many of Helsinki’s older parts, it used to be a big farm with parklands of its own. Now it’s once again a “park”. A Science Park.

If it weren’t for the continued use of the area for some kind of agricultural use or research as far back as records go, a casual visitor might be a tad upset by the name “park”. Office buildings more like. And, alas, instead of a row of human-sized grocery shops for the campus’s obviously green consumers, the inevitable box for our “choice” of K-Market or S-Market.

But rather than focussing on the negative (diatribes we do not want) let’s just point out that the newest addition to Viikki’s campus area is the Helsinki Environment Centre. Designed by Oulu-based architects Kimmo Kuismanen, at well under budget (!!!!) and to require half the energy required by Finnish construction standards, and soon to be carbon neutral. Check out the pdf and try not to start worrying about how many tons of CO2 your life requires…

(Is it possible that Oulu architecture is so, well, so approachable and pleasant in scale, because the architecture department is located in the city centre and in old buildings?)

As for municipal art, Viikki can boast a few tons of used tyres in the shape of a gorilla. By the Estonian Villu Jaanisoon.

The black beast is actually called “Everything is Possible”. Which is a good thought to linger on.

Browsing for intelligent commentary on the interesting times we live in, we discovered this: What Architecture Can Do by Reinhold Martin. He praises the Occupy Wall Street folks and analyses the protest in architectural terms that don’t forget buildings’ sheltering function. And he exhorts architects to stay political this time. And not just a la Haussman or the NYPD in using “hygiene” as an excuse to ignore important demands.

Martin doesn’t quite think that everything is possible. But what he says is still pretty bold: More is possible!

Architecture is capable of mounting a profound critique of the status quo. In doing so, it can also model partial worlds and offer up these models for public discussion and disputation. Not perfect worlds, but possible ones.

Of imperatives and fantasies

How quaint to think that the idea of a jet set got its glamour from the association with travel and airlines. Today’s office types are all forced into air travel at regular intervals so it’s not like it’s a luxury. More of a drag, really.

But Finavia, the people who manage Helsinki-Vantaa airport, believe that even today’s harangued airline passenger can be dazzled into shopping for luxury perfumes, chocolates and other goodies. Once passengers have been fed through the bottleneck that is security it is but one step into shopping glitz. To the left, the new airport branch of Eat&Joy with its Finnish culinary delights. Ahead, er, stuff. And lots of exhortations to buy it.

So coming home exhausted, it was a treat to sit back and read/watch the news. Interesting storm in a teacup over Voima-magazine’s spoof-advertising or rather adbusting habit. Voima, brash, bright (in many sense of the word) and really annoyingly laid out, has been doing pretty amazing journalism and adbusting for years. They apparently have now published a book of the best spoofs.

We spotted this on tonight’s cultural news, a delightful Finnish quirk that we hope will survive the economic gloom featured in the economics bit of the same programme. They reported that Voima had approached Kiasma contemporary art museum to exhibit some of the best ads. After initial interest Kiasma declined to exhibit them. There was concern that the museum’s sponsors might not like the critique implied (!?) in art that overtly ridicules consumerism, perhaps even their products.

The book’s co-author Klaus Welp did tell the YLE interviewer that only few targets ever complain outright.

Guggenheim-foe Kantokorpi has blogged about this, and singles out Kiasma’s Director, Pirkko Siitari, for special opprobrium. Bye-bye, Art As Critique, he seems to be saying. We share his concern but hope he is wrong. But, his choice of image to illustrate his blog was fabulous. A pile of coins stacked up as a building photoshopped onto an image of “that” site: that bit of Katajanokka where the land meets the water in a commercially interesting kind of way, and where fantasies have been let loose before…

So while JHJ was settling in with the other travelling salespeople in a small town somewhere further dark, Kantokorpi and various others who have taken a critical view on the G. franchise were talking about it at Kiasma. Rumour has it that Kaarin Taipale (whose work we recommended in an earlier post) is writing a pamphlet about the G.

Architectural debate is alive and well in this city!

Gugglegum mistaken for ambition

Many who seek respectability in our town are doing their utmost to argue that their views on bringing the Guggenheim or “Guggis” to Helsinki are the result of careful reflection rather than jerkings of knee.

“We aren’t for/against on principle”, people seems to be shouting. “We are bringing a fresh and ambitious perspective to a tired and humble city…” Er, this style of rhetoric usually from supporters of the scheme.

Equating ambition with brashness is not new in political rhetoric, but it still irks. Particularly when it is applied to our fair Helsinki. A hair-raising example was a column published by The Usual  on 25.10.2011. In gooey globules of rhetoric it sang to The Usual’s hymn sheet of utterly, bizarrely sycophantic praises. Of the Guggenheim.

No wonder those of us who some months ago still had time for possibly sensible arguments in favour are increasingly against. Writing on his (Finnish-language) blog, the prolific art critic Otso Kantokorpi has collected an impressive array of online sources (in English). They do not add up to an endorsement of Mr. Gallen-Kallela-Siren’s dreams (soon to be articulated at a second-hand bookshop near you.)

The standard arguments apply. That’s to say, economic ones.

Alas, Helsinki’s city councillors are not reading this avalanche of information, which Kantokorpi keeps updating at breathless speed. (He informs us, for instance, of the architects already in the loop. This bunch make Prince Charles’ and Leon Krier’s New Urbanism look almost gritty!)

If our councillors were keeping up with this story, they would appreciate that the G operates more like a business than a charitable foundation. And they’d realise that Guggenheim Bilbao was but the very visible tip of an  iceberg worth of investments  in the entire region. Alas, rather than the hundreds of millions that were used to create the “Bilbao effect” today we only see the “effect” itself.

Careful critics such as D. Ponzini may talk of archistarships posing as urban policy, of said billions [sic] poured into shore up the McGuggenheim. But not too many are listening in Helsinki.

Helsinki’s political types not even stop to consider why we have never heard of any Guggenheim but the New York and Bilbao’s. Why does nobody know about Guggenheim Berlin or, goodness me, Abu Dhabi? Why they would want Helsinki to join this list of franchised non-entities is unclear?!

And more to the point, how dare The Usual write such drivel about this cheapened brand?!

Do they not realise, as Green politico Tuomas Rantanen said on Yle TV’s Strada, that the Guggenheim brand is not worth the millions being asked for? Shame the councillors aren’t doing their homework.

The really depressing thing isn’t the ample evidence for why we should question this “solution” to the Helsinki Art Museum’s undeniable problems. The really depressing thing is that we’ve seen this before. It seems that small cities like Helsinki are prone – in a serial fashion – to believing the suave, smooth-talking salesmen who tell them that the future is theirs if only they sign on the dotted line for this or that global brand to beautify their town.

Remember Kaarin Taipale’s brilliant analysis, Cities for Sale, of how Helsinki GAVE away money to the multinational JC Decaux, thinking it was dressing itself up in a hipper garb?

Oh, and while I’m on a rant: apparently (and I can’t remember where in the mesh of blogs on this madness I stumbled on it) the current G’s leadership have said they’re interested in some bit of Helsinki that has land and water.

Here’s one bit in Munkkisaari/Hernesaari. Not sure whether the heliport expansion in the pipeline there would enhance or detract from Helsinki’s efforts to suck in international (Russian?!) art lovers with the help of some Gugglegum.

(Oh, and another over-priced, has-been brand, with life-sucking properties for city streets will land near you soon too. Starducks.)