A municipality with only 5,000 inhabitants in Norway is on the New York Times’ list of 52 recommended attractions in the world. The Kistefos Museum, just a stone’s throw away from Oslo, capital of Norway, build on a long industrial history and started with an old wood pulp mill. When the Danish architectural firm BIG designed the bridge-shaped museum building which opened last year, it immediately became a popular sculpture park with a “twist”.
The Twist bridge museum at Kistefos art park opened on September, 2019 and visitors were instantly charmed by the contemporary and refurbished industrial art at the Kistefos Sculpture Park. Danish designers BIG (Bjarke Ingles Group) have added a little twist to the park, that doubles up a functional infrastructure and visual feast for the aesthetic eye.

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131 years of industrial history
The grandfather of the present owner, Christen Sveaas, bought the factory 131 years ago, and today the building adds an impressive new venue to this industry and contemporary art museum located in Jevnaker, a municipality about 80 kilometers north of Oslo. The gallery peeks out from a forest of tall spruce, pine, and birch and the structure takes the form of an inhabitable bridge spanning a winding river. It is appropriately dubbed The Twist.
The iconic twist design actually controls the river banks, that had varied heights. Besides that, the bridge was added to form an access point across the river, so visitors are able to enjoy the park, that was built over an old wood mill. It also turns a visit to the sculpture park into a processional journey making it possible to tour it in one go by way of the connective gallery.
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Sculpture Park With a Twist in Norway
“After many years of planning and development, we’re delighted to be opening this beautiful new space ‘The Twist’ at Kistefos, which will allow us to expand our work with leading contemporary artists and welcome more visitors than ever before. Our ambition is to make Kistefos a must-see cultural destination with a world-class temporary exhibition and sculpture park program to complement the rich industrial heritage of the site,” said Christen Sveaas, founder of the Kistefos Museum.

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International attraction
The Twist was on New York Times list of 52 recommended attractions in the world. The nearly 10,800-square-foot gallery transforms a container for art into a piece of sculpture in its own right. So far, the Kistefos site is open to the public only in Summer (2020: 24 May – 11 Oct), due to the cold Norwegian climate.

Read more about the impressive art collection at Kistefos here.
Sculpture Park With a Twist in Norway, written by Tor Kjolberg