Client: Helsinki Photo Festival
Collaborators: Helsinki Photo Festival, You-Chia Chen
2022 West Terminal 1, Helsinki, Finland
The American filmmaker David Lynch had his solo photography exhibition touring across Europe. With Lynch’s distinctive style—steeped in mystery, quirkiness, and surrealism—we found a fitting venue in a soon-to-be-demolished cruise terminal in Helsinki. The decaying West Terminal 1, with its stained horizontal mirrors, wide advertisement lightboxes, red benches, and floor markings in deep red, provided the perfect setting for Lynch’s work.
The exhibition space was designed on a tilted floor plan, featuring a larger main area and a smaller photo booth set apart from the main space. This layout created parallelogram-shaped rooms and corridors, each dedicated to different photography collections. Irregularly shaped openings, drawn from Lynch’s sketches, were carved into select walls. From certain perspectives, these openings formed an infinite wall illusion, reflecting the exhibition’s theme, Infinite Deep. Grey-blue walls and red velvet curtains were used as dividers, enhancing the atmosphere and complementing Lynch’s evocative photography—featuring nudes, distorted figures, and industrial scenes.
A highlight of the exhibition was the photobooth, a reimagining of the iconic Red Room from Twin Peaks. Adding a Finnish touch, we furnished it with Alvar Aalto’s Armchair 406 and Floor Light A805, known as “Angel Wing.”
Arriving at the old terminal by the sea on a misty, bone-chilling Finnish winter evening was an experience in itself—one that set the tone for stepping into David Lynch’s world. Passing through the ticket gates felt like embarking on a journey into the deepest corners of his dreams.
