Luova

Meeting and event venue, 2025

Luova (in Finnish: ‘creative’) is a new type of meeting and event venue designed for EMMA, Espoo Museum of Modern Art. Luova is built as a ‘space within a space’ inside the museum’s main galleries, located on the second floor of the iconic former printing house designed by renowned brutalist architect Aarno Ruusuvuori. Luova is intended for lectures, performances and workshops organized by the museum, and it is also available for rent for private events. When not in other use, the space is open to the public as part of the museum’s exhibitions, featuring video works from EMMA’s own collection. The space covers approximately 100 m².

Luova forms a bold, characterful interior space at the heart of EMMA — a place where visitors can immerse themselves in creative thinking, special moments, or boundary-breaking work. The concept draws inspiration both from the curiosity cabinets of Renaissance collectors, designed to nurture cultural appetite and be shared in select company, and from the gentlemen’s clubs of a bygone era, intimate settings where important conversations could take place in peace, sheltered from everyday noise, within architecturally striking and inspiring surroundings.

Architecturally, Luova consists of two circular, freely placed “cabinets” – a formal reference to the concrete pillars supporting the exhibition floor’s ceiling structure – as well as the space between them, defined in alignment with the ceiling slab’s beams. The circular cabinets can be visually separated from the surrounding space with curtains, enabling flexible arrangements for different purposes, such as small-group work. Material choices were aimed at creating a soft and rich whole with good acoustic performance.

The design work has encompassed also the layout of the surrounding galleries and auxiliary spaces, as well as the placement of permanent artworks. In the foyer, visitors encounter Tear by Swedish artist Oscar Furbacken, created specifically for this setting, alongside Sunrise, an immersive installation by Icelandic artist Thordis Erla Zoega, which engages both light and the presence of viewers.

Client: EMMA Espoo Museum of Modern Art