Museum Yard in 2023: Alusta Pavilion

Alusta pavilion, built on the courtyard of the Design Museum and the Museum of Finnish Architecture, will be open for public from June 2022 to October 2023. The project explores nature-culture relations and offers a place for encounters between humans and non-human animals in urban space. The pavilion functions as a platform for environmental discourse, both on the level of its form and materiality, and the different activities which take place there. It comprises a pollinator friendly meadow and structures made with clay in its different forms; unfired and fired brick and rammed earth. Alusta is realized by a multidisciplinary group lead by Suomi/Koivisto architects.

Alusta offers a space for thinking about our place as part of a more than human community. The pavilion takes its form through collaboration of plants, human visitors, natural processes and passage of time. The clay and wood structures offer habitats for people, plants and insects. Fungi take part in maintaining the natural cycles and offer shelter and nutrition to insects. In collaboration with ecologists from Helsinki University, the project explores increasing biodiversity in the urban environment and demonstrating the importance of soil and its microbes for the wellbeing of the ecosystem. Human visitor can participate in caring for the soil and plants and in building the pavilion. There will be clay workshops for families, architectural summer schools for youth and seminar programme on biodiversity and the built environment during summer 2022.

Events and open discussions

Night of the Arts in the Alusta Pavilion workshops
Thu 17.8.2023 At 5pm-6pm in Finnish // 8pm-9pm in English (free entry).

In this workshop we slow down to listen and follow the movements of the more than human world. Who do we share this space with? What kind of feelings and thoughts this encounter raises? The workshop requires focused presence so please join us in time.

Soil Matters
Tue 22.8.2023 at 5.30pm. (in English / free entry)

Soil sustains life, sequesters carbon and offers us resources and ecosystem-services. How is soil? What can we do for it? What can it do for us? How can we strengthen our connection to soil by the means of architecture and urban planning?

Soil Matters
Wed 23.8.2023 at 5.30pm (in English / free entry)

Soil is an active, living entity that sustains life. How is soil? What can we do for it? What can it do for us? How can we strengthen our connection to soil and learn to understand different meaning it embodies by the means of art and architecture?

Speakers: visual artists Nina Rantala and Visa Suonpää and architect, doctoral researcher Elina Koivisto, Aalto University.

Degrowth and Architecture
Tue 29.8.2023 at 5.30pm (in English / free entry)

Degrowth movement aims at a sustainable, healthy and democratic society that isn’t based on continuous growth. In an ecologically sustainable society care, environmental preservation and freetime are valued. What could architecture be like in this setting and how would it be made?

Speakers are activist-scholar Eeva Houtbeckers, University of Turku and architect, doctoral researcher Elina Koivisto, Aalto University.

Material cycles in construction
Tue 5.9.2023 at 5.30pm (in English / free entry)

Matter and energy form endless natural cycles on earth. How could human action, including building construction, find its place as part of these cycles again? How long can materials rotate in human use and what happens after?

Picture: Suomi/Koivisto