Serlachius Manor’s annex

Annex

Serlachius Manor’s extension was completed in June 2014. It multiplied Serlachius Manor’s exhibition spaces. It also fulfilled Gösta Serlachius original dream of having an art museum of his own in Mänttä.

Serlachius organised an international architectural competition on the design of the museum extension in 2010–2011. The competition attracted 579 submissions from 42 countries. Barcelona architectural firm MX_SI’s work Parallels won the competition. Architects Héctor Mendoza, Mara Partida and Boris Bezan designed it. The submission launched a further design. The construction work of the extension by the name Pavilion began in autumn 2012.

Serlachius Manor’s extension descends in a gentle arc towards the lakeshore. It respects the manor and grows to his full dimensions towards the park. A glass corridor connects the pavilion to the old manor beautifully. The pavilion’s basic structure consists of laminated-timber columns and beams. They support the building, but they also create it its distinctive appearance. The alternation of wood and glass surfaces impart a rhythm to the building and connect it to the surrounding park.

Floor area

Serlachius Manor’s extension has a gross floor area of 5,700 square metres. It features 1,000 square metres of new exhibition space, a high-quality restaurant, a reception hall and a museum shop. The pavilion also offers staff office premises as well as modern storage facilities for the Gösta Serlachius Arts Foundation’s substantial art collection.

The total cost of the construction project was around EUR 20 million, which Gösta Serlachius Fine Arts Foundation financed with its own resources. The company Jämsän Kone- and Rakennuspalvelu Oy was the main contractor for the construction project of the annex. In the architectural design, the Finnish partner was the architectural firm Huttunen-Lipasti-Pakkanen.

The modern and sensitive architecture of Serlachius Manor’s extension has received a wide praise. It has also collected a number of awards and nominations in many competitions both in Finland and abroad. It won, for example, the Wood Building of the Year award in Finland in November 2014.

Awarded building

The extension called the Pavilion was one of the four finalists in the Architecture Finlandia Prize. It gained also international visibility as a candidate in the Mies van der Rohe 2015 competition. European Union’s most important contemporary architecture competition, it attracted 420 entries from 36 European countries. In addition to the Serlachius annex, three other projects from Finland got a nomination.

At the end of year 2014, architectural firm MX_SI became nominated in the Young Architect category in the Architect of the Year award, which is UK’s most prestigious award. The firm was also a candidate in the architecture category of the Swedish Årets Rum/Room of the Year award.

In April 2015 MX_SI and its Slovenian architect Boris Bezan won Slovenia’s highest award for architecture. In December 2013, the annex and architectural firm received the notable award of Spanish International Architecture Prize.

Finland’s Project Management Association chose the pavilion as the winner of the Project of the Year competition in November 2014. The project’s quantity surveyor, Ramboll CM Oy received the prize.