Renzo Piano has designed the new building for Oslo's Astrup Fearnley Museet, Norway's contemporary art museum. In a spectacular site on the edge of a fjord, the new museum is constructed out of wood with a dramatic double curved glass roof. Divided into two halves which are separated by water, one building houses the museum's permanent collection and the other will house temporary exhibitions, a café and shop.

The museum also has its a boat dock, its own bathing beach, and a Sculpture Park stretching along the shores of the fjord. Piano has also added a viewing tower which gives wide-open views across Oslo. The museum covers an area of 7,000 square metres on the headland of the new waterfront district of Tjuvholmen and is surrounded many new galleries, restaurants and a hotel.

The new museum will open to the public on 29 September 2012. The Astrup Fearnley Museet is a privately owned contemporary art museum which was founded in Oslo in 1993 to house and display the Astrup Fearnley Collection, the most important contemporary art collection in Norway. The Collection includes works by Norwegian and International Contemporary Art and focuses on individual works and artists, including major works by Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, Olafur Eliasson, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, and Cai Guo-Qiang, among many others.