Located in the heart of the city, the entrance to Amos Rex is through Lasipalatsi, a distinguished 1930s Functionalist pavilion comprising restaurants, shops, the Bio Rex cinema. All the new build gallery spaces of Amos Rex, however, are underground.

On the ground level the only visible façade is the roofscape of the underground exhibition halls and their skylight windows. The structure of the large domed skylights has enabled designing a column-free 2,200 m2 black box-kind of exhibition hall. The hall’s scale is awe-inspiring with the ceiling domes, and it is designed to be modifiable and flexible for the future forms of art. The ceilings are covered with thousands of acoustic discs and floors are black hardwood block floors.

Inside, sloping stairs lead down from Lasipalatsi to the airy and light lobby space that is designed to decompress senses before and after the art exhibitions. The lightning fixture, designed by Petri Vainio, covers the whole lobby ceiling and provides an ethereal combination with natural light from the sky light above. All the functions are in matt black and visually strictly separate from the lobby space.

The restoration of the modernist gem Lasipalatsi was done with great respect and eye for details. All the materials and colors are chosen to follow the originals. The renovation celebrates the original design while new additional furnitureare clearly contemporary.

Together with the Lasipalatsi Pavilion, the museum complex extends to just over 13,000 square metres. From an architectural and a cultural perspective, Helsinki’s evolving urban identity has been paramount in conceiving the Amos Rex project, a truly exciting new centre for the visual arts.