MUNCH MUSEUM AND STENERSEN MUSEUM COLLECTIONS | Oslo, Norway | REX

MUNCH MUSEUM AND STENERSEN MUSEUM COLLECTIONS
Oslo, Norway
CLIENT: HAV Eiendom, Oslo Kommune
PROGRAM Art museum housing the Munch and Stenersen Collections, self-produced and travelling exhibitions
AREA: 16,585 m² (178,520 sf)
BUDGET NA
STATUS: Limited competition, second prize, 2009
ARCHITECT: REX
KEY PERSONNEL: Lee Altman, Haviland Argo, Gabrielle Brainard, Keith Burns, Alex Diez, Jeffrey Franklin, Javier Haddad, David Menicovich, Joshua Prince-Ramus, Jacob Reidel

CONSULTANTS: Lord, Magnusson Klemencic, Transsolar

Oslo recently celebrated the opening of its world-acclaimed Opera House, an important step in the city’s commitment to developing Bjørvika and to unifying Oslo’s eastern and western centers. With four more significant projects under development within the district—Oslo Central Station, the Barcode, the Deichman Axis, and the Munch Area—Oslo must be wary of overwhelming Bjørvika with too many strong visual landmarks. Such a constellation would undermine the Opera’s iconographic power, and dilute the identity of the city as a whole.

To best complement the Opera, the Munch Museum should forge a new kind of iconography—one based on innovative building performance, not signature form—to command a significant place within Oslo’s mental landscape. Where the Opera is strong, the "Yin Yang" proposal for the new Munch Museum is strategic, establishing itself as a worthy counterpart by radically addressing two cardinal challenges facing contemporary museum design.....visit REX