A few days ago Juan Herreros answered public questions at Dagbladet.no about his 1st price winning proposal for the new Munch/Stenersen museum in Bjørvika in Oslo.

(Photo:haveiendom.no)

Several of the questions seemed to me like they were trying to him on the basis of the aesthetics of the building. I think the public debate could gain a lot if participants would approach it with a more personal stance, referring to what they themselves have explicit knowledge about as some of the questions did.

The interdisciplinary nature of architecture and being a very public topic makes input from a lot of directions seem smart. It could be great to have debates like this where anyone can get through. However it seems like the setting falls short as the architect ends up spending most of his time fending off complaints about the first impression from the pictures. This does not result in anything except the architect returning back to the official consultants to get a better structured and constructive dialogue.

I am not familiar with how many open meetings ther have been about this project prior to the competition going out or in the aftermath. There should be room to hear a lot of different sides in an architectural process and I hope there will be fruitful debates through the Internet as well. Politicians have embraced the net as a media to rapidly reach out and communicate broadly and I expect that architects will follow.