I have been trying to digest the character – and quality – of the new National Museum in Oslo. Its architect, Klaus Schuwerk, is not modest about it. ‘I’ve always wanted to design my own pantheon’, he is deeply interested in the proportions of the rooms, he views himself as working in a tradition going back to Michelangelo and Frank Lloyd Wright, and he has required the museum to issue a disclaimer, making clear everything for which he was not responsible (see below). Actually, by the standards of most museum architects, he has achieved an incredible amount of control over the quality of the materials, the quality of the construction and its detailing, including shallow marble sinks in the Gents and a beautiful long, Neapolitan café, looking out onto the square outside:-


