An international team of architects and fine carpenters in collaboration with the Finnish National Museum have realized Y, a temporary installation conceived for the Seurasaari Open-Air Museum in Helsinki, Finland, and set in the historical Niemelä Tenant Farm courtyard.
Y is an equation of temporality, time and provocative use of wood in the museum milieu. Niemelä Tenant Farm is an example of traditional Finnish vernacular architecture consisting of 13 buildings, brought to the museum island in 1909 from central Finland.
The temporary piece forms a new social courtyard at the tenant farm entrance, as an addition to the existing courtyards for animals and humans. The installation seeks to encourage the visitors stay longer in the Niemelä by altering the familiar and permanent museum environment. Y provides a hypnotic meditation spot from where to reflect on the changing state of time.
Y combines digital fabrication with handcraft, inspiring and revealing the possibilities of wood in modern construction. It encourages cross-border collaboration between architects and carpenters, as well as the combination of traditional working methods of fine carpenters with digital design and production. Y is built with horizontal prefabricated CLT-elements interlocked by 568 timber wedges and is itself like a large wooden joint made of CLT.
The temporary installation will be on view until the 15th September.
all images © SWANG