The contentious project was rejected after councillors voted 53 to 32 against partially funding the landmark project at the end of a mammoth five-hour debate which concluded early this morning.

Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation director Richard Armstrong told the Helsinki Times: ‘We are disappointed that the Helsinki City Council has decided not to allocate funds for the proposed Guggenheim Helsinki museum, in effect bringing this project to a close.

The foundation’s deputy director, Ari Wiseman, also confirmed that no further alternative funding options would be put forward, ending a five-year struggle to get the museum project off the ground.

The veto came shortly after the Helsinki City Board, the council’s executive body responsible for projects, voted eight to seven in favour of proceeding with the scheme, proposed for a prominent site in the city’s South Harbour, although it had already lost the financial support of the Finnish government.

Earlier this month Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa told the AJ the museum was a ‘ruthless business presented as a cultural project’ and demanded its public funding be spent more innovatively and efficiently to support Finnish artistic culture.

Pallasmaa’s remarks came as Finnish MP and architect Anders Adlercreutz and architectural critic Jonathan Glancey both called for a second museum contest, calling the chosen scheme the ‘wrong building for the wrong site’.

The competition to design the gallery was won last year by Paris-based Moreau Kusunoki Architects, which topped a shortlist including the UK’s Asif Khan. The contest, organised by Malcom Reading Consultants, attracted 1,715 submissions from nearly 80 countries.