The urban architecture collective Nordic Works opens six windows into tomorrow’s living in the studio of the Museum of Finnish Architecture in Helsinki
What will the world be like in 80 years’ time? What if the future is, in fact, a bright one? The award-winning Nordic Works Collective’s EXPO2100 – Home and City in the Future exhibition, on display in the Museum of Finnish Architecture’s Studio, 25.11.2022–2.4.2023, opens six windows on future homes and cities based on the collective’s research.
The exhibition EXPO1200 – Home and City in the Future is a statement for a positive vision of the future. The exhibition gently reminds us that what happens tomorrow depends on what we decide today. When it comes to the built environment, it’s time to make sustainable and far-reaching decisions, taking into account nature’s bearing capacity and the needs of other species.
The title, EXPO2100, is a nod towards the World Expos, and the exhibition sets out to explore and showcase audaciously big questions. It gazes at a future world both through everyday objects as well as the lens of entire regions, in a diverse and all-encompassing way. Unlike traditional World Expos, EXPO2100 invites visitors to the intimate space of the Museum of Finnish Architecture’s Studio – a capsule, through the windows of which it is safe to explore the future.
Fortunately, there are many routes to a sustainable future. The six teams of the Nordic Works Collective invite visitors to compare different points of view to make better choices.
“The exhibition launches a topical discussion amidst the uncertainty of our time. Through the research, we want to outline positive paths to the future and discuss the opportunities that even seemingly negative progressions can offer,” says architect Miia-Liina Tommila of the Nordic Works Collective.
JADA Architects envision in their video a future Building Act that prohibits the demolition of buildings and ensures the best possible utilization of scarce materials, resources and social capital. VdV outlines a recipe for good living under the terms of the environment’s bearing capacity. AOR proposes a renaissance of the periphery with new types of growth centres emerging at the interface between cities and the countryside as a result of population growth. In the video by Avarrus Architects, a local future replaces globalism in many areas of life. With their Lifestyle-driven Housing video, MUUAN envisions that in the future, housing solutions will be targeted at different lifestyles instead of the average person. In the Infinite Loop video created by Kaleidoscope and Tommila, waste no longer exists, and instead objects are part of living systems, which transform our living environment and its materials in endless cycles.
About the Nordic Works Collective
The Nordic Works Collective is a collaborative group and company of nine architectural offices who are all known as pioneers of participatory methods and democratisers of urban planning.
The collective made a name for itself through various open workshops and events around Finland and Europe, as well as the “Kaupunki uusiksi” television series on Finland’s national broadcaster Yle. In the series, the collective visited various cities in Finland in order to re-enliven their urban landscape together with citizens.
The Nordic Works Collective was awarded the Pietilä prize for new architectural thinking in 2016, and the Yhdyskuntasuunnittelun Ruusu prize in 2014 for developing interactive methods in urban planning.
EXPO2100 is based on the collective’s latest research initiative, made possible with the support of the Asko Foundation, The Finnish Cultural Foundation, the Nordic Culture Fund, the Finnish-Norwegian Cultural Foundation and the Norwegian-Finnish Cultural Foundation. The exhibition is the collaborative endeavour of six members of the Nordic Works Collective: AOR, Avarrus, JADA, Kaleidoscope & Tommila Architects, MUUAN, Virkkala de Vocht Architects.
The Nordic Works Collective: EXPO2100 – Home and the City in the Future is on display in the Museum of Finnish Architecture’s Studio, 25.11.2022–2.4.2023. Articles and podcasts supplementing the exhibition will be uploaded on the expo2100.fi website on the opening day of the exhibition. The exhibition is admission free.
For high resolution press images, please contact:
Ilona Hildén
Communications planner, Museum of Finnish Architecture
ilona.hilden@mfa.fi
The visions in their entirety
Additional information:
Uusi Kaupunki Collective contact persons:
Tiina Teräs
tiina.teras@arktom.fi
Miia-Liina Tommila
miia-liina.tommila@arktom.fi
Jussi Vuori
jussi.vuori@jada.fi
Media inquiries:
Katja Lindroos / Urban Practice
katja@urbanpractice.fi
Press release published 17 Nov, 2022