Oslo’s new National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design finally has an opening date.

The highly anticipated project by German company Kleihues + Schuwerk will open on June 11 next year, more than a decade after being named the winner of an international competition to modernize the facilities of the 18-year-old institution. located along the historic Vestbanen harbor in Oslo. .

The museum will begin welcoming visitors this summer for guided tours of the new building, which will display more than 5,000 works of art in a 90-room, two-story building that includes an art library, cafes and a rooftop terrace. outside. as part of a program that will also reduce the museum’s greenhouse gas emissions by 50%.

A new sculpture atrium will center the plan surrounded by the new exhibition hall and gallery spaces, rising upwards into a bright hall in shiny alabaster that sits atop a stone plinth consisting of the first two floors of the museum, allowing access to the terrace and roof gardens which offer visitors a view of the surrounding town hall and the famous medieval city Fortress of Arkerhus. The Norwegian slate-clad facade will be a marked improvement over the 19th-century brick and brown stone structure of the previous building which closed in January 2019 and is currently is the subject of a conceptual study led by Snøhetta.

The 54,600 square meter museum will be the largest such institution in the region when completed.