Jyväskylä Music and Arts Centre
1997
Location: Jyväskylä, Finland
Project Status: Competition, third prize
This competition to design a new Music and Arts Centre marked the centenary of Alvar Aalto’s birth. The site in Jyväskylä was to be an extension to the town’s existing Cultural Centre, designed by Aalto in 1928. Caruso St John’s entry was awarded third place.
The project is understood as a city wall where the new and old facades combine to consolidate the perimeter of the block and gather programmatic and spatial elements. The facades of the new building are made of a continuous wall of timber. 300 x 300mm squared spruce logs are stacked simply and repetitively up to the height of the adjacent building.
At the centre of this thick wall is a courtyard across which the different programmes, levels, and the new and existing building can be seen together. This central space is lined with white tiles and glass, generating a continuous and shifting luminescence that conditions the gallery spaces.
The project gives a clear and separate identity to the two constituent institutions within the Music and Arts Centre. Each organisation is given a carefully scaled set of spaces. These are distinct from one another and thus enable autonomous use. The territory of the art gallery is distributed between the old and new buildings. This provides a range of gallery spaces with different tectonic character, different aspects and variable lighting conditions.