Twisty Art Museum/Bridge Spans a Norwegian River

When trying to improve circulation around a riverside park, the playful architects at Bjarke Ingels Group waste no opportunity. Instead of building a bridge, they’re building a gallery that just happens to span the river. 

Kistefos Museum

is a former wood pulp mill that has been turned into a museum, art gallery, and sculpture park in Norway. The new building has a twisted structure to provide windows on one side of the space and a skylight on the other.

The unique design also makes for two different heights of gallery space, making room for large-scale installations and sculptures on one end (triple the height of an normal ceiling) and smaller art pieces on the other. The larger end of the 15,000-square-foot building will also have a floor without windows, suitable for video installations or other light-sensitive pieces.

Ingels, a Danish architect known for his whimsical, inventive style, previously turned the National Building Museum in Washington D.C. into a giant maze, and is in the process of trying to add a ski slope to a Copenhagen power plant, among other projects. This one will no doubt add a little more excitement to the average visitor’s river crossing. 

[h/t: Dezeen]

All images courtesy Bjarke Ingels Group