MUNCH Museum’s Ascending Route Frames Oslo in a Series of Encounters

From the Oslo waterfront, the bent upper section of the MUNCH Museum is hard to miss, and anyone touring the munch museum oslo will find that the more revealing design decision sits inside. The building keeps the rooms that protect art apart from the spaces that let visitors look out over the city.

The museum opened on October 22, 2021, in the Bjørvika district. Estudio Herreros designed it, with Juan Herreros and Jens Richter leading the project. LPO Arkitekter served as local architect. The 13-floor building holds 11 exhibition halls and is devoted to the work of Edvard Munch and a wider cultural program.

Inside the munch museum oslo

The architects divide the building into two zones. The static zone is a closed concrete volume for the galleries, where staff must tightly manage conditions that could harm the works. Beside it stands the dynamic zone, a more open area that carries visitors between exhibition spaces. Its glazing keeps the city in view throughout the climb.

Rising routes like this one turn movement into part of the experience, much as a stair does in Valencia’s new hub. Valencia’s Innovation Hub and Its Blue Spiral Staircase shows how a single vertical element can organise an entire building.

For the architects, the rising public route is the core of the design, a clear statement in contemporary oslo architecture. Circulation links the lobby with the upper terraces and observation spaces. The tower therefore offers a series of encounters with the collection and the surrounding city. No single panoramic moment at the top carries the visit.

The split in munch museum architecture also serves an environmental purpose. According to the museum, airlocks between the two zones regulate temperature and humidity. This allows the circulation areas to use natural ventilation while the galleries keep their own stable climate.

The facade is a skin of undulating, perforated aluminum. Cladding manufacturer Lindner supplied 4,018 panels. The company says the perforations filter sunlight while letting the building feel open. The rippled surface also breaks up what would otherwise be a large, flat wall of metal.

Some panels are built to move. Lindner says 100 of them can open so that artworks can be lifted into the building. The facade therefore handles deliveries as well as weather, a reminder that a museum’s loading operations shape its outer form.

The lobby of the museum is a covered public room that the architects treat as part of the building’s purpose, not a passage to the galleries. Visitors can gather there, look outward, and then head upward on the public route. The sequence is deliberate, and it turns the act of getting from one room to the next into part of the visit.

Sequences of rooms that unfold rather than announce themselves also drive Snøhetta and barth’s work. Le Rosey’s Six Dynamic Spaces by Snøhetta is worth a look for how a different institution arranges its interior sequence.

Via yankodesign.com

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