Kiasma

Steven Holl won the 1993 international competition for Finland's contemporary art museum with an entry titled "Chiasma," a reference to the crossing optic nerves in the human eye and, by extension, to the building's two intersecting circulation lines: one tracing the cultural axis toward Finlandia Hall, the other curving along the natural line of Töölö Bay. The museum opened in 1998 with galleries stacked across five floors and linked by ramps, lit throughout by carefully angled skylights designed to capture Helsinki's low northern daylight. Its titanium-clad, asymmetric form was controversial on a site facing the Parliament and a statue of Marshal Mannerheim, but Kiasma has since become one of the most recognisable works of contemporary architecture in Finland.