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In the realms of art museums and architectural excellence, the Guggenheim brand is hard to match, with a string of landmark museums designed by legendary architects. Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Guggenheim in New York; then Frank Gehry added the dazzling Bilbao museum that turned a little known Spanish town into a mecca for travellers and art lovers. The most recent Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi was also designed by Gehry and all three were commissioned by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

However, when the Foundation was planning the Helsinki Guggenheim, it decided to stage an international design contest. The design brief for the $200 million museum on Helsinki harbour inevitably stirred interest throughout the world, attracting a record-breaking 1,715 entries.

While identities have been kept secret, contestants are said to include both eminent ‘big name’ architects and university faculties. We know the latter, because when the Guggenheim Helsinki Design Competition’s six finalists were announced last December, a team from UWA’s Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Visual Arts (ALVA) was among them.

We can’t show you their design, but it’s one of the above finalist designs, and the winner will be announced in June. Says ALVA Dean Simon Anderson: “This is a prestigious achievement, given the Guggenheim Foundation has only ever used architects of the calibre of Frank Lloyd Wright and Frank Gehry.”

From the outset, the ALVA team has been led by Associate Professor Dr Fernando Jerez (who is also Director of SMAR Architects) and his partner in life and business Belen Perez de Juan, a teaching assistant at ALVA. Both have won several architectural awards in Europe.

Dr Jerez points out that there were extraordinary elements to this challenge, including the fact that ALVA’s design was produced without the team being able to visit the Helsinki site.

“We had to do a lot of research to get a feel for the site, and the judges were clearly delighted that we had taken into account the public space dimensions of the building,” says Dr Jerez. “In summer, Helsinki lives on the street but during its dark, hard winter, it retreats indoors. We tried to create a space that worked all year round, that gave the city a public space not just a building.”

The Spanish architects, who took up UWA appointments last year, involved ALVA students from Stage 1. “They loved that it was a real life project as well as an exceptional learning opportunity,” says Dr Jerez.

“Being involved in something like this places the student between the academy and the firm. All our students do interships with companies for work integrated learning, and this project saw them working on all aspects of the design brief including drawings, models, preparing the 50-page folio we had to submit – as well as debating the merits of the design.

“The Guggenheim is probably the biggest art brand in the world and because of the number of submissions, it is the biggest contest of its kind in the last century. So it’s been a great experience for us to be there and for our students to have been involved.”

All of this is happening in a special year for the Faculty of Architecture that had its foundation meeting on May 26 in 1965. Fifty years of achievement will be marked by holding an alumni forum on May 26 at the Octagon Lecture Theatre. A panel of eminent graduates drawn from five decades will discuss the next 50 years of Architecture at UWA and beyond. Speakers will include Kerry Hill, Ross Donaldson, Richard Hassell, Pia Ednie-Brown, Abbie Galvin, Craig McCormack and Tahmina Maskinyar.

Photo: The six finalists for the Guggenheim Helsinki Design Competition (Photos: Guggenheim Foundation)