An architectonic x-ray of the Munch Museum in Oslo

In 1940, the impressionist artist Edvard Munch donated thousands of his paintings, drawings and sketches, as well as several paintings from other authors to the Norwegian capital. With all this material, in 1963, coinciding with the centenary of his birth, a museum dedicated to the author of The Scream opened its doors.

In 2008, Oslo's City Council promoted an international competition to build the new Munch Museum in a new neighbourhood. The Spanish architect Juan Herreros, together with his studio, won the contest under the pseudonym Lambada Files. Finally, in September 2015, its construction started, and on October 22 this year, it opened its doors. This delay sparked debate among members of the public and politicians, who argued over its cost — 320 million euros — and its social utility, leading to architecture being newly associated with intense dialogue and long-term collaboration processes between multiple agencies.

The result was a vertical building with thirteen floors — the bottom ones slightly tilted — held by recycled stainless steel and a low carbon concrete structure. It is, to all intents and purposes, a different museum – multifaceted, as it will be a meeting point for different forms of art (opera, ballet, music, cinema, etc.) and ready to serve as a platform for debate on the problems that affect and concern society.

La Virreina, in cooperation with the CentroCentro in Madrid and the arc en rêve in Bordeaux, is now documenting the twelve years of construction and the ups and downs the Estudio Herreros have dedicated to the project. At a time when most museums are rethinking their attributions and public meaning, the exhibition focuses on a radically different case – one of a museum being built from scratch in a city that is transforming its appearance with the introduction of a new skyline, with citizens and collective uses bringing meaning to a cultural infrastructure.

Curated by Valentín Roma, the exhibition is named Lambada Files for two reasons. Firstly, because that's how Norwegian media has been referring to the project. Secondly, because the word “file” is a reference to a series of materials that document the work carried out in the museum and that have never seen the light of day due to being the architectural studios' daily work. They are like an internal bureaucratic red tape that is difficult to understand for the customer and the public in general. In its place, the architects end up redrawing the blueprints for clean publications that declutter the buildings they reference.

The exhibition showcases previously unpublished images by architectural photographer Iwan Baan. It is completed with a series of dialogues in which some of the leading voices of the international scene debate the paradigms that are renewing the architectural language and the way people live in cities.