IN SPITE of the enormous success of the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, the €130m ($145m) design chosen for the Helsinki outpost will not quieten misgivings about the foundation’s aspiration to create a global cultural network.

The competition was won by an indistinct jumble of pavilions faced in charred wood that reflects all too well the ambiguities of the Guggenheim’s intentions. The design, announced on June 23rd, is as quietly deferential as Frank Gehry’s Bilbao design is self-consciously flamboyant. Along a quay now devoted to parking and a port warehouse, the Paris-based Moreau Kusunoki Architectes have proposed nine loosely arranged pavilions, six of which house gallery suites. Glassed-in passages and gathering spaces among the pavilions glue them into an ensemble.

The pavilion roofs turn up in identical gentle curves, with the taller ones huddling at the base of a tower topped by a restaurant—a lighthouse for dining. The visitor experience is rather shapeless, too. Most people will make their way from the city centre along a cheerless esplanade to a broad entrance plaza. They wander around a glassed-in garden and down the passageways to find the gallery entrances, and cross through the passages as they move between pavilions, which enforces a rhythm of viewing and pausing.

These in-between spaces seem the least realised of the design. Are they display spaces or hallways? Visitors tend to treat hallways as places where art that does not matter is hung.

The airport ambience of the public spaces could be enhanced by more consistently drawing in light and views to let the city resonate with the art. Nor does Moreau Kusunoki exploit the rich possibilities available for bringing daylight into galleries. Several will be lit by roof clerestories, but the architects could add sidelight. Advanced tools make it possible to provide ample daylight without harming artworks.

It is extraordinary that a design that triumphed over 1,700 competitors should turn out to be rather ordinary. It is respectful, yet teases out no identity unique to Helsinki. Moreau Kusunoki makes nothing of the waterfront site (in contrast to the much-loved Oslo Opera House, where the alluringly warped roof dips into the sea). The design considers no new way to look at art that would make it a must-visit. (The Guggenheim Bilbao transformed yet belongs.) It does not look like a gaudy franchise of a global brand bent on commodifying culture, as opponents feared it would, but neither does it look essential.

Lacking a convincing artistic role or architectural rationale, the Guggenheim has repeatedly resorted to dubious economic-development claims to overcome local scepticism. These include the shopworn “Bilbao effect”, but efforts to replicate the Bilbao magic have foundered, from Guadalajara to Rio de Janeiro and Salzburg to Vilnius. Branches have closed in New York, Berlin and Las Vegas. Even Bilbao’s remarkable catalytic effect occurred in the context of a massive planning and infrastructure overhaul of the entire city.

The Helsinki effort is also haunted by the gigantic Guggenheim Abu Dhabi. For years construction has been said to be imminent. But if migrant labourers should endure exploitative working conditions in the emirate, the damage to the Guggenheim could be severe. Its global idea is looking increasingly threadbare.