The power and architectural view that the conception of a new museum can have on and in the host city, especially in recent decades, has acquired a fundamental role.
The planning, the innovativeness and the visual impact of the skyline take on more and more real cultural, tourist, national but also iconic values.
A museum that, beyond being public or private, is not an immobile and bureaucratic monument, but can provide to the community with a visual, social but also economic plus especially for who works in the art world outside the structure itself.
Although the exact date has not yet been announced, from September 2021 the opening of the Munch Museum has been scheduled in the new Bjørvika district located waterfront, east of the center of Oslo.
Through the photos here below, it’s possible to understand what the impact will be on the entire city.
Reference to the new project, the director of the Munch Museum stated: “at Bjørvika we will be able truly to exploit the potential of our collection, and partnerships with other museums will enable us to bring works to Norway that have never been shown here before. Visitors to the new museum will always be able to experience the highlights of Edvard Munch’s artistic career, alongside changing exhibitions of works by other artists”.
The winners of the project, created by the studio of the architect Juan Herreros and his colleague Jens Richter, start from the idea of a tower-shaped museum, where the main functions are organized vertically.
As the project presented: sixty metres in height, clad in recycled, perforated aluminium panels of varying degrees of translucency, and with its distinctively leaning top section, the tower is a highly visible landmark from all sides.
The large number of gallery spaces distributed over an even larger number of storeys allows for wide variations in ceiling heights and room sizes, enabling optimum spaces to be allocated for both permanent and temporary exhibitions.
The tower, which sits on a three-storey podium, has two zones: one static and one dynamic. The static zone is an enclosed concrete structure, which complies with stringent security, humidity and daylight requirements in order to protect the art within.
The dynamic zone, which has an open, transparent façade with views over the city, is where visitors can move between the different exhibition areas.
The building, its conceptual approach and construction systems, wants to be an expression of the collective engagements of the Norwegian society to the environment echoing its present challenges and the desire for innovation that confidently steps forward into a better future.
by Alain Chivilò
