8 Firms Vying to Design New Gallery at Kistefos Museum
The Kistefos Museum, a sculpture park and post-industrial campus located about one hour north of Oslo, is planning a new site-specific gallery that will open in 2031. The museum, working with Malcolm Reading Consultants, has selected eight firms to advance to the next phase of an invited design competition for the building.
Even if the name Kistefos is not immediately familiar to architects, they have probably seen photographs of The Twist, an inhabitable bridge that BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group added to the museum's campus in 2019. (Not surprisingly, BIG is one of the eight teams listed below who are advancing to the next stage of the competition.) The Twist is but one piece of Kistefos, an arts destination in Jevnaker, Norway, that is built on the grounds of a historical pulp mill and consists of an industrial museum, two art galleries, and a sculpture park with 55 scenically placed sculptures, with one or two added each year.
The aim of the new museum building is to permanently house the art collection of Kistefos Museum founder Christen Sveaas. Sited within the wider Kistefos Museum sculpture park and post-industrial campus, the new gallery building is intended to be “an original design and exemplar of sustainable design and practices” as well as, in the words of Kistefos director Kari Roll-Matthiesen, “a work of art in itself.” Here is the shortlist of architects selected to advance to the invited design competition's second stage (in alphabetical order):
- BIG (DK)
- Christ & Gantenbein (CH)
- Ensamble Studio (ES)
- Jensen & Skodvin / Hølmebakk Øymo (NO)
- Kengo Kuma and Associates (JP)
- Lina Ghotmeh – Architecture (FR)
- Snøhetta (NO)
- SO–IL (US/NL)
The eight practices will have a few months to develop their concept designs, and the winner will be announced in early fall.