The Guggenheim Is Asking People To Submit Designs For A New Museum In This Helsinki Parking Lot

When you look at the photograph above - a car park in Helsinki, Finland - what do you envisage?

If it's a tasteful and innovative, mid-size, modern and contemporary art museum, than the Guggenheim Foundation may have a job for you. The foundation, dedicated to collecting and preserving art in places such as New York's famous Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Guggenheim Museum, will soon be seeking entries to an architectural competition on what to do with the space.

The competition comes after approval yesterday by Helsinki City Board, which had turned down a previous offer for a $185 million Guggenheim museum in May 2012, part of an on-again-off-again plan for a mid-size museum in the city, The New York Times reports. Finnish news outlet YLE notes that the site will be held for two years - if a suitable design for the space isn't found, the museum will not be built.

"We warmly welcome the City Board's decision and are grateful to the many people in Finland who supported moving the project forward to an architectural competition," said Richard Armstrong, Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, said in a statement. "We look forward to this exciting new phase."

The details of the architectural competition will be announced soon.