Oslo, Norway

Reflections. Munch Museum. Oslo

Alfredo Payá

Our museum would like to be a form in communication with the rest, with the city, with the fjord, with the countryside, with the landscape, with Munch, with the Universe… Who is this museum for? If we value the aspirations of the new city of Oslo, its present ambitions, probably, we will view the international tourist as an objective to attract. The tourist would do this; he would start by situating Norway in Europe, then the fjords in Norway, Oslo at the end of its fjord, the bay of Oslo, the Museum inside the bay, the exhibition rooms of the museum, the pictures inside the exhibition rooms and in the end the person in front of the picture. In front of Munch’s pictures, it is beautiful to think that this entire journey is present, in some way, in his pictures; that is to say facing this exhibition room of Munch one could recognize all the physical and human geography of Norway. To build this museum is not only a problem of defining a building, it is furthermore, the need to build a site, a very special site for the city, the new face of Oslo. We propose a powerful piece capable of converting itself into a symbol of Oslo and managing to situate Oslo on the world map. A piece, in the middle of the bay, that looks three hundred and sixty degrees around. A landscape building that constructs an interior landscape from where it is possible to observe all the surrounding landscape. The ambition of building a space for the city was always there from the beginning. Not just a museum but a space for the celebrations of all kind of events, encounters and activities,…. A hybrid of culture, production and leisure. The building is part of the street, it is not a building inserted into the city but a part of the street that contains a building. The building is wrapped in a layer of public space that fills it with contents. The Project proposes the construction of three landscapes: one, that is a square under a great roof, another is a roof converted into an open square. Between the two, an interior landscape understood as a versatile and transformable space. The drawings express the geographical rationale of the proposal. On the other hand would be the reading of the shape as a new “vessel” of culture, that indicates a new way of expression of Munch´s work. A vessel painted with the brushstrokes of the artist´s poetics. The outer walls of the building gather aspects related to the physical context and even from phenomenological features: reflections of the surrounding city, the glimmer of the water, the sky passing behind the building or of a cloud floating past…

CREDIT LIST

noname 29 s.l.

Alfredo Payá Benedito.
Architect. Project Manager and Director of the technical team.

- Arturo Calero Hombre. Architect
- Sonia Miralles Mud. Architect
Vicente Pascual Fuentes. Architect
- Gonzalo Piqueras Corchano. Architect
- Beatriz Vera Payá. Interior design Architect

cityplan

diagram

groundfloor

mainspacefloor

roof floor

section 1

section 2

service floor

Europaconcorsi Beta

Reflections. Munch Museum. Oslo