Oslo Museum of Modern Art

Location: Oslo, Norway
Client: Private
Status: Competition

This international design competition attracted 220 entries. The Straits is a proposal for a new iconic museum on an important waterfront site in downtown Oslo. The proposal is to create a dynamic new landmark building for Oslo and complete the Pipervika district as an urban composition including City Hall, Plaza, Marina and Akershus Fortress.

The proposal incorporates the new national museum of modern art, architecture and design together with government buildings.

The form of the museum is conceived as a series of cranked ‘straits’ approached via a landscaped ramp from the south and off the Pipervika plaza. This terrace, flooded landscape will provide a new public space with views and evoke the hemi boreal nature of Norway.

The straits are designed to draw in the user towards the museum and create an exciting extension to the plaza.

Externally the form of the museum is expressed as extruded forms with skeletal structures and in filled textured brick panels for opacity and glazing for transparency. The building form results in terraces at each level either for gallery of public use ie sculpture gallery. In contrast the office building uses a skeletal frame but has the cladding externally and a tapered form.

Externally the form of the museum is expressed as extruded forms with skeletal structures and in filled textured brick panels for opacity and glazing for transparency. The building form results in terraces at each level either for gallery of public use ie sculpture gallery. In contrast the office building uses a skeletal frame but has the cladding externally and a tapered form.