Genesis of an Icon

Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art 
Oslo 2012
Renzo Piano Building Studio with Narud-Stokk-Wiig (Oslo)

Renzo sipped his digestivo ruminatively. It had been another good lunch. Smoothing his napkin, he outlined the concept for the new Astrup Fearnley Museum with a few expressive strokes of his pen. Another signature design for an institution in search of an icon. When he got back to the office he would pass it to his team of assistants drawn from the best Swiss and German universities...

Prominently located on the former shipyard site of Tjuvholmen and overlooking Oslo Fjord, Renzo Piano's Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art is a striking design, but one that raises more questions than answers. A grandly curved roof profile unifies the composition, which is bisected by a narrow pedestrian street and canal, lending it a distinctive identity, particularly when seen from the water. The street is an extension of the adjacent waterfront promenade and connected to it by a bridge across a canal. It terminates in framed views across the fjord. To one side, a wide flight of steps leads up to a picturesque jumble of timber houses strung out along steep and narrow streets. A scrap of grass separates the other side of the museum from the water. A small, newly created, swimming beach provided with showers is one of the best features of the project, although its scale and character feel curiously inadequate in the context of the city, fjord and large museum.

From a range of anything less than 200m, this project appears even more riven by misjudgements. The big roof is the defining feature of the building, but its asymmetrical form suggests uncertainty: it neither belongs to the orthogonal forms of the city backdrop or contrasts with it in any satisfying way; the curved roof covers a series of smaller spaces, creating awkward volumes in the meanly proportioned galleries; the divisions of the block create a visual weakness where the roof straddles these. The separation of the temporary and permanent exhibition spaces by the street makes no sense whatsoever, merely introducing another dislocation in the already fragmented experience of the museum.

The permanent exhibition gallery is awkwardly arranged half a level down from the entrance, so that passing pedestrians and cyclists create a distracting visual disturbance above the art display. Although Jeff Koons sculptures and ranks of Damien Hirst vitrines could probably hold their own in any environment, the distracting reflection off the glass on a magnificent Francis Bacon triptych, poorly placed next to a large window, make it difficult to enjoy the painting. And all of this in a building over half of which appears to have been dedicated to commercial development.