art museum in Trondheim

rammed earth art museum

During my fifth year, I enrolled in the course “AAR4721 Architecture and the City”, delving into civic building design within the context of urban planning projects. Our specific task was to design an art museum in Trondheim, a topic that was part of an ongoing debate due to the existing museum’s challenges with space shortage.

Collaborating in pairs, my partner, Casper Kragholm, and I approached the assignment with a critical question: is the conventional practice of centralizing art museums in new, huge, standalone structures outdated? By advocating for adaptive reuse of the existing building, rather than dismissing the current museum, we therefore proposed upgrading the existing structure while incorporating a new underground gallery.

Considering Trondheim’s clay-rich ground, our design incorporated rammed earth walls. These earth rooms served as spaces for pause and contemplation, strategically positioned in-between the more conventional white cube exhibition spaces. Acknowledging the potential overwhelming nature of navigating a museum, we recognized the value of incorporating these pause areas to offer visitors a reset of the mind. The rammed earth rooms are the only ones with natural light, and we let the light, and the beautiful walls play the main character of these rooms.