Oslo, Norway

Designed by Juan Herreros and Jens Richter of the Spanish architecture firm Estudio Herreros together with Oslo-based LPO Arkitekter, the façade of the new Munch Museum glistens and abstractly gleams at its site on the Oslo seafront waters of Norway’s capital.

Set in the city’s growing Bjørvika District, the long-awaited museum was created to host the extensive body of work of Norwegian artist Edvard Munch.

The building is destined to be a fundamental piece of heritage of the history and character of Norwegian culture.

This is a unique opportunity to develop a contemporary concept of a museum with a transcendental urban role and a historic responsibility as a cohesive element of the community, not only of Oslo but of the entire nation.

Juan Herreros and Jens Richter’s new creation will certainly become a global cultural destination on the global art and architecture map.

The new museum is one of the world’s largest dedicated to one single artist containing over 26,700 works of art in its collection and 11 galleries.

The institution will, for the first time in its history, have ample space to display Munch’s work – including his large-scale murals (such as, The Sun, completed in 1909, which stretches nearly 8m). The exhibits will also include several versions of Munch’s iconic painting, The Scream.

Its ascending shape connects the public space covered by the lobby that houses recreational, commercial, cultural and restoration uses, with the terraces/observatory/club of the rooftop, offering in parallel the discovery of the work of Edvard Munch and the different historical strata of the city of Oslo.

This gesture of conceiving the communication system as a public space/ascending viewpoint is the essence of the heterodox character involved in developing a vertical museum.

But there is more on this journey: the public discovers other types of rooms, dining areas, administrative units, the library or the educational center that speak of a programmatic complexity that surpasses the conventional idea of the museum as a set of rooms that are visited and a series of invisible rooms from which the institution is supposed to be managed.

Sheathed in perforated, translucent aluminum that was selected specifically for its ability to reflect the colours and weather changes of the Oslo skies, the building’s sharp-looking, geometric shape is mirrored in magnificence on the fjord’s shoreline.

The facades, finished with different degrees of transparency, offer an enigmatic and evanescent perception of the building that reacts to the mild stimuli of the Oslo climate, offering very different images depending on the moment.

The building responds to the requirements involved in the energy use and environmental sensitivity demanded by the Norwegian public through a holistic conception in which structure, facilities and construction operate collaboratively under the Passive House concept that is based on aspirations such as lightness, sustainability, recyclability and maintenance.

An implementation that seeks to present Norway as a country focused on experimentation and innovation has allowed the construction process to be an event in itself.

On top, an outdoor terrace allows visitors to take in the cityscape and Oslo’s landscape. A restaurant is located on the 13th floor.

The new Munch Museum will be a dynamic arts center, with different audiences (experts, schoolchildren, tourists, art lovers) that are expected to come.

Project: Munch Museum
Architects: estudio Herreros
Design Team: Juan Herreros, Jens Richter, Gonzalo Rivas, Beatriz Salinas, Carlos Canella, Andrea Molina, Paola Simone, Carlos Ramos, Iván Guerrero, Ana Torrecilla, Alberto Sánchez, María Franco, Raúl García, Frank Müller, Víctor Lacima, Carmen Antón, Ramón Bermúdez, Margarita Martínez, Luis Berríos-Negrón, Spencer Leaf, Verónica Meléndez, Xavier Robledo, Ricardo Robustini, and Paula Vegas
Architects of Record: LPO Arkitekter
General Engineering: Kulturplan Bjørvika: Multiconsult | Hjellnes Consult | Brekke &
Strand Akustikk. Engineering (competition): IDOM. Facades (preliminary project): Bollinger + Grohmann.
Sustainability: Asplan Viak. ICT: Rambøll Norge. Safety: COWI. Landscape (competition): Thorbjörn Andersson
Photographers: estudioHerreros, Adrià Goula, Tove Lauluten