Stories of a Place in Time. Moomin Museum in Tampere, Finland

Abstract

In the 2017 spring term, the design studio of Public Building at Tampere University of Technology in Finland set a design task for a building that not only occupies and strengthens an urban place in Tampere but also presents imagined spaces: a museum for the stories, characters and places of the Moomin graphic novels by Finnish illustrator Tove Jansson. These graphic novels form the cultural and literary heart of many Finnish childhoods. For the design of such a cultural building, questions of place, landscape, the experience of spatial and material qualities are crucial.

The project by Diana Rimniceanu begins with a museum in search of a place of its own in the city of Tampere. The museum extension aspires to express the Moomin stories through an architecture that is specific and autonomous, capable of preserving the richness and uniqueness of the place while revealing the unexpected landscapes that it hides; an architecture that grows gradually, scene by scene, creating encounters between the Moomin creatures, the historic industrial buildings and the new visitors. The intervention reveals through space a sequence of atmospheres rooted within the darkness and light of the Moomin stories while balancing between the reality of things and imagination.