Lillehammer Art Museum
From an urban perspective, Lillehammer Art Museum suggests linkages to different scales of context in the formal arrangement of the program elements. The entrance level and public entries have been connected to the orthogonal geometry of the urban surroundings and the adjacent plaza, while the exhibition spaces are related formally to the distant contours of Lillehammer’s softly curved mountains.
The building then relates itself to both characteristics visible from its location and thus becomes a versatile negotiator between immediate and distant contextual conditions. The orthogonal public entrance spaces were designed as transparent as possible, while the softly tilted and curved exhibition spaces were clad with Siberian untreated larch. Natural light is drawn in by integrated lights along the curving geometry of these walls.
These wooden, instrument-like forms later gave the building its local nickname, “the grand piano,” thus unconsciously emphasizing the initial ideas of the museum as a resonance body. The new museum was connected to the existing concrete building with a wide, glazed public bridge. The outdoor spaces or courtyards between the two independent buildings were treated as autonomous pieces of art. The artist Bård Breivik created an intricate collage of stones in the courtyard.
Second floor plan and ground level plan.
Primary facades
View of the museum from the main street adjoining the market shows the undulating wooden wall lifting from the slope of the ground and revealing the lobbies that connect to the public plaza.
Installation by Bård Breivik
The larger temporary gallery is set within a generally square room. The eastern part of the room is tilted and aligned with the exterior undulating wood wall alongside the plaza.
The sculpture garden. Water traverses the sculpture from top to bottom in a constantly changing manner, creating sound and reflection.
The sculpture garden is set between the exsisting museum and the new was developed together with the artist Bård Brevik.
