Munch Stenersen Museum. Oslo
The site where the new Munch-Stenersen Museum will be built is currently a void, at the edge of a dockside. This view has, up until now, been turning its back to Oslo’s residents. The presence of the sea and the encounter between fjord, port and city grants a unique opportunity to plan the transformation of Bjorvika, whose waterfront – once associated with shipbuilding – has undergone continuous changes over time. Following this thread, the question arises: how to create a new building that means something more than just a solution to a functional problem, and how to draw a new waterfront that expresses Oslo’s connection with the sea?
The building is not generated as a predetermined form, but rather as a sequence of pieces, like rolled stones, ships’ hulls or even strange faces that gather together entering the Oslo’s Fjord - architecture always seems to represent something different to what it is. Despite this, the origin of our project is based on a simple rule: a polygonal geometry, which generates and encourages multiple connections between homothetic elements that are in fact the same, yet never repeated: scaled differently according to their uses, and connected with each other clearly as in a diagram. These hulls, which will house exhibition rooms in their upper floor, are supported by a long base-building which will provide a space for the museum’s wide range of complementary uses. An initial geometric pattern, with a regular modulation, is intersected by another polygonal order, creating a spatial complexity out of strict regularity. Thus, the project represents two complementary architectural systems in scale, geometry and function: on one hand, a low elongated space - based on an orthogonal grid – and, on the other hand, a sequence of variations of complex geometric volumes, that breaks in to different scales and rotations, before reaching the water.
In urban terms, a long horizontal stretch leads from the Akerselva Common esplanade, allowing the visitor to walk to the museum alongside the city’s historic river. The socle-building located on the east side towards Bispevika will conceal most of the museum’s private-use facilities: the administration areas, the conservation department, delivery and reception areas, as well as workshops and storage rooms. This way, the internal functions will not interfere with the more fluid public areas of the museum: foyer, reception, lecture hall, multipurpose rooms, restaurants and shops.
The upper level will be entirely devoted to the museum’s exhibition areas. The largest volume, where, at ground level, the main foyer is located, will host the exhibition of Munch’s monumental works, including The Sun, Alma Mater and The Researchers, on its first floor. The museum’s exhibition concept is based on a sequence of modular rooms of differing sizes, all interconnected, allowing visitors to explore various alternative routes. The rooms have different clear heights, always above 4.5m; each room may be used independently: some may be closed to the public, while exhibitions are being prepared, without interfering with the general route through the museum. There are different possibilities on how to subdivide the rooms - using partitions or smaller cubicles - that will be studied in depth throughout the future development of the project. The double skin concept that defines the exhibition spaces allows the location of structural, mechanical, lighting and service elements in the inner buffer space. The choice of materials and constructive systems responds to the architectural idea that generates the project: the socle building uses a simple structural framework and its exterior façade is made of prefabricated panels that create a rational modulation and rhythms of open and closed elements. The exhibition rooms are conceived as metalic structures, which will convey lightness to the volumes that open to the waterfront. Their welded recycled aluminium hulls, present a polished and continuous material resistant to the corrosive effects of saltwater, relating the new Munch-Stenersen Museum to the Norwegian shipbuilding industry.
The urban planning of the museum area follows the wish to integrate lively commercial and residential areas around the new cultural centre of Bjorvika. The new buildings in lots B1 and B4 in Operagata, the beach facilities pavilion, and the commercial building on island A11 respond to the city’s concept of gradually reducing the buildings’ heights down to the sea, to protect the views from the city, and to make the waterfront accessible – visually and fiscally – to visitors and residents, with new shops, restaurants, ferry stop and marina. By granting priority to pedestrian and cyclist access and by limiting the access of vehicles the area will have a very reduced motorized traffic, allowing more new green spaces to be added to the Oslo’s commons.
The design-criteria for the Munch-Stenersen Museum has the concept of sustainability as a core element of its conception, not only by the use of recycled materials on its construction, but also by following the recommendations of the Green Building Council. The use of passive architecture techniques, combined with the use of active strategies of energetic efficiency, the use of geothermic/hydrothermic systems for thermo production - will allow minimal use of non-renewable energy-sources and reduce the overall energy consumption of the building. Recycling and storing rain water for sanitary use will be present as important factors in the design of installations. The lighting of the whole structure will pay attention to luminic factors in the interiors and exteriors, allowing a good night view of the paths and of the buildings, without over illuminating the area.The use of High-tech systems will allow realtime control over the energetic efficiency of the building, allowing the necessary actions for its correction.
Architecture has the power to evoke - in one place - images of many other places, whether real, imagined, or dreamed: it is capable of enveloping, within a single space, all of those spaces that we have once seen or imagined. The impressions of the cold light on that first day when we visited the site are blended with the hypnotic faces that Munch represented on his canvasses, and also with memories of organic shapes in Nordic architecture or with fragments of eroded rocks or ice in the sea. There on the Oslo Fjord, on the edge between city and sea, the Munch-Stenersen Museum will appear like a random cluster of strange metal hulls, redrawing the waterfront line with an architecture that is both memory and invention, looking out to sea as if it had always been there, like a fleeting vision of a remote memory of a canvas, now brought to life.
Architects
Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos, S.L.P.
Fuensanta Nieto – Enrique Sobejano
Collaborators
Alfredo Baladrón,
Ernesto Garcia Piza,
Heitor García Lantarón,
Patricia Grande,
Pedro Guedes,
Borja Ruiz-Apilánez,
Sebastian Sasse,
Jorge Sobejano,
Guillermo Laguna,
Models
Juan de Dios Hernández – Jesús Rey,
Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos, S.L.P.
Photographs
Diego Hernandez