Skissernas Museum
Since Art Historian Ragnar Josephson started to gather an archive documenting the artistic process, about 80 years ago, Skissernas Musuem, Museum of Artistic Process and Public Art, has gradually grown to a large cluster of buildings that, apart from housing the world’s largest collection of sketches, is an important carrier of the identity of the Museum. This is the first extension in the museum’s history that solely addresses its interface, with foyer, restaurant, shop and a multi-purpose hall.
The new addition of slightly bent volumes is projecting itself into the existing sculpture park, releasing it’s grip of the street grid and instead latching on to the diagonal approach through the park. This is the axis of entrance that the large extension by architect Hans Westman dated 1959 was designed for. The new foyer space is very tall to take in both this existing board formed concrete volume and the grown trees of the park, but also to be able to stand up next to the rather massive existing museum volumes. The new restaurant, however, is due to respect for a more recent addition by architect Johan Celsing, dated 2005, kept low to not intervene with the previous extension’s large window facing the park. The original entrance volume from 1959 becomes integrated as a volume fitting shop and reception.
The cor-ten steel, favored by sculptors ever since the material was invented, handles the adjacent historic red brick architecture as well as the rough materiality of the existing concrete volume, yet contrasts to these with the potential of sharp detailing inherent of a panel material. The free arrangement of the facades is composed carefully to get particular views from, into, and through the added building volumes – to reach a transparency without an actual large surface of glass.
For the multi-function hall in the existing inner courtyard of the museum, a great variation in height of the surrounding buildings and a problem to carry loads in the underlying structure, as well as an ambition not to disturb the existing facades around the courtyard, urged for a solution with a roof soaring high, resting on four columns, and surrounded by clerestorial light. The roof is spanning 27 meters and its ceiling is a hovering plate of mirroring aluminum, all purposed to achieve a spatial experience which is not clearly indoor, but is keeping some of the character of an open inner courtyard.
The furniture of the restaurant, foyer, and shop are all designed by Elding Oscarson, and are deliberately transmitting the unfinished character of a sketch, or prototype. As a total, the intention is for the new addition is to add a valuable experience of architecture within the park, as the Museum gets an updated interface, becoming a more functional place for people to meet.
