PAX proposes a cavernous museum embedded into norway’s fjord landscape

the cave: an underground museum proposed for norway

In Sunnfjord, Norway, where the hillside drops toward the water, PAX Architects imagines a cave-like museum that seems to disappear underground.

The proposal, called The Cave, is a 1,500-square-meter visitor center for Astruptunet, the former home and working landscape of painter Nicolai Astrup, and was selected as a finalist in an open competition that drew 164 entries.

The Danish studio’s design embeds the built space inside the slope rather than beside the existing museum cluster. From Astruptunet, the new volume is meant to vanish behind terrain and vegetation.

From the nearby village and county road, it reads as a narrow crevice in the landscape, a small cut where glass, stone, and planting begin to suggest an interior below the hillside.

PAX cave museum
visualizations © PAX Architects

a museum entered through a crack in the landscape

The team at PAX architects draws the museum’s concept from Nicolai Astrup’s painting The Cave, using the idea of a hollowed landscape as both spatial guide and atmospheric reference. Visitors enter through a low opening in the terrain, where local stone continues from outside to inside, forming parapets, thresholds, and places to sit.

The approach keeps Astruptunet as the main cultural marker on the site, while the new museum works below ground, almost as a second layer to Astrup’s world above it.

Inside, the visitor center is organized around a central foyer reached from two entrances. Exhibition rooms and the café sit on either side, allowing the gallery areas to be secured while the café can still host gatherings.

The plan follows the slope through a series of interior platforms, so movement through the building carries a gradual shift in level, ceiling height, and view. Ramps and an elevator make the three floors accessible, folding universal access into the cave-like route rather than treating it as an added technical fix.

PAX cave museum
The Cave visitor center is embedded into the hillside above Jølstravatnet

pax architects frames views from exhibition spaces

The public areas open toward the landscape through long horizontal windows, turning the lake and mountains into framed images. These views do more than give the museum a scenic backdrop.

They place Astrup’s paintings in direct conversation with the landscape that shaped them, so a visitor can move between artwork, rock, vegetation, and water without losing sight of their connection.

The exhibition rooms are darker and more protected, with small light cracks bringing in narrow traces of daylight. PAX architects describes the gallery as a flexible black box, where works can hang on cave-like walls or be arranged through movable systems.

Near the exhibition area, small niches allow visitors to look back out across the landscape, creating pauses between the paintings and the place they came from.

PAX cave museum
PAX Architects proposes a museum that appears as a narrow crevice in the landscape

stone, vegetation, and the thermal weight of the ground

The material strategy keeps the building close to its surroundings. Local stone shapes paths, walls, seating, and interior floors, while stone from excavation is proposed for reuse within the building.

In-situ concrete walls are mixed with excavated stone, clay plaster adds a tactile surface, and micro-perforated untreated metal ceilings help with acoustics while recalling the texture of rock.

The project is designed as a passive house, using a highly insulated envelope, triple glazing, geothermal heating, heat recovery, and the thermal mass of the ground to stabilize interior conditions.

A green roof planted with local species stores water and helps the building remain visually absorbed by the slope. Controlled lighting protects the artworks, while natural ventilation can support the foyer and café through a stack effect on warmer days.

PAX cave museum
the interior follows the slope through shifting platforms and framed views

keeping a cultural landscape in view

Around the The Cave museum, PAX Architects plans footpaths with a light touch, connecting the bus stop, the lower entrance, the café terrace, the upper entrance, and Astruptunet through gravel, grass, and local stone. Resting points along the route give visitors time to look across the fjord and hillside before entering the galleries.

The landscape remains the main experience, with the building acting as a way to move through it, look at it, and return to Astrup’s paintings with fresh attention.

The proposal sits within a broader shift in museum architecture, where cultural buildings increasingly work with fragile settings instead of competing with them. At Astruptunet, PAX architects answers the site with a building that lowers its profile and uses architecture as a lens.

The visitor center becomes a passage between art and terrain, shaped by stone, shadow, and the changing weather over Jølstravatnet.

PAX cave museum
local stone and vegetation help the building recede into the terrain