Turku Museum of History and the Future

Introduction

The architectural design explores humanity's historical spatial relationship with time across different cultures. Language plays a central role in how we perceive time and space, history, and the future. In many languages, the future is considered to be in front, while the past is behind. In Finnish, for example, the future is described as being in the East (sunrise) and the past in the West (sunset). This concept is reflected in the visitor experience through a key navigational axis running from west to east—sunset to sunrise, symbolising the journey from past to future.

The building's shimmering materiality embodies a historical understanding of time as it relates to the environment, the changing seasons, and the sun's annual cycles. It serves as a marker of environmental time, adapting and reflecting the significant variations in sunlight throughout the day and year. The building's structure is an exploration of material time, featuring a contrasting palette of construction methods and materials that span ancient to futuristic. Stone represents slow, ancient time; timber symbolises steady, organic time; and aluminium evokes manufactured, cyclical time.

The architectural plan balances flexibility and pragmatism with character and distinctiveness, while sustainable practices and future-proofed design are central to the overall concept.