Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art

During our time in Oslo, we visited the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Tjurholmen, facing onto the Oslo Fjord. 

The Museum is a privately owned contemporary art gallery that was founded in 1993 and moved to its present site in 2012.  It played a crucial role in introducing the Norwegian public to contemporary art and has a permanent collection of Norwegian and international art.  It also puts on 6/7 temporary exhibitions each year.

The museum was built as part of an initiative to revive this area of Oslo, southwest of the centre, that originally contained port and industrial buildings.  A wide walkway now runs alongside the fjord, connecting the museum, offices, cafes, etc with the centre of Oslo.

The museum was designed by Renzo Piano and it consists of three buildings: two containing galleries together with an office building.  The two gallery buildings are separated by a narrow canal with a bridge connecting them.  One gallery contains a permanent collection of art works while the other gallery is used for temporary exhibitions.  A sculpture park containing works by Anish Kapoor, Louise Bourgeois and others separates the museum from the fjord.

These are fairly typical Renzo Piano buildings with lightweight steel roof and wall structures.  The external walls of the galleries are mainly covered with panels of timber boarding while the office building has windows set in the timber boarding.  All three buildings are covered by a curved, glazed roof, open over the central canal with connections between the two galleries.  The gallery on the fjord side has a fully glazed, full height entrance atrium.  There is a lot of exposed and fairly extraneous steel work externally including trussed beams and columns.

The main feature of the museum is the curved roof which is probably best viewed from a distance from where it resembles an armadillo!  Unfortunately, to this visitor, the use of the curved roof has not led to very interesting or even very useable gallery spaces and there are a lot of awkward spaces and changes of level that make it difficult to circulate around the galleries.  The external timber wall panels have weathered very badly even though most of them are protected by the overarching roof.  They would have survived better if they had been painted with the traditional Scandinavian red paint!

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Gallery

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Architecture in Developing Countries: A Resource

The design and construction of appropriate, low-cost buildings for education and health in rural areas of the developing world.

Nigel Wakeham is an architect who lived for 23 years in Southern and West Africa and the SW Pacific working on education, health and other projects. He has since worked for over 20 years as a consultant for national governments and agencies such as the World Bank, DFID, ADB and AfDB on the implementation of the construction components of education and health projects in many countries in the developing world.​

​The objective of this website will be to provide the benefit of more than 45 years of experience of working in developing countries to architects and other construction professionals involved in the design and construction of appropriate, low-cost buildings for education and health. It will provide reference material from the projects that Nigel has worked on and technical information on the design, construction and maintenance of educational and health facilities and other relevant topics and these will be added to from time to time.

I am happy to be contacted by anyone requiring further information on any of the projects or resources referred to in this website or by anyone wishing to discuss work possibilities.

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