Statsbygg | Oslo, Norway 2009

This project, for the new National Museum in Oslo, is to house a wide range of exhibits from art works to historic and archeological pieces. The site allotted to the museum, facing Oslo harbour, is highly prominent but also contextually nuanced and sensitive, adjacent to a listed building.

The gallery is conceived as a series of geometrically simple spaces of various sizes, containing all the required service and storage functions. These spaces are a counterpoint to public galleries that are enveloped by thousands of suspended pieces of translucent porcelain that play with form and light, natural and artificial, thanks to their varying density and depth. At times, they seem cloud-like.

This modulation of light also affects the other spaces, allowing for a rich composition of light and dark, expansive and confined spaces, with galleries draped through the building to provide a diverse sequence of exhibition rooms.