Munch Museum designed by Herreros Arquitectos will take pride of place in redevelopment plan for Oslo's Bjørvika waterfront
A spectacular 12,00sq ft (1,100sq metre) glass covered museum to house the world's largest collection of Edvard Munch works has been given the go-ahead for the Oslo waterfront in Norway – a decision made, fittingly, in what is the 150th anniversary year of the artist's birth.
A spokesman for the Munch Museum confirmed that formal approval by the city council was granted on Wednesday night.
The decision comes after much political wrangling and four years after the Spanish architectural firm Herreros Arquitectos won a competition to come up with a redevelopment plan for Oslo's Bjørvika waterfront, with the planned Munch Museum taking pride of place.
If all goes to plan the new £178m museum will open in 2018 and be 200 metres from the recently completed opera house. It is part of a wider project to open up the city towards the sea, with cultural facilities, shops, hotels, houses and offices instead of the docks and former shipyards.
In a video about the project, architect Juan Herreros said the underlying concept was the "creation of the 'Fjord City'". He said: "The Munch museum is an emblematic element in this construction right in the heart of a huge project."
The architects said the museum – a concrete building within a glass shell – would have a kind of "enigmatic, somehow evanescent" presence and at night would appear like a great lantern.
Herreros said: "The museum seeks to be the image of the future of Oslo; to be the 21st century postcard which Oslo is still without. Possibly the Deichmann Library, the Snohetta Opera and the Munch Museum may turn out to be the most ambitious achievements being produced in the world today."
The political debate has centred on the cost and the location with opponents arguing that the new museum should be built in the same area as the old, the residential Toyen area.
The Munch Museum opened in 1963, the year of Munch's 100th birthday, and has more than half of the artist's entire output including 1,150 paintings, 7,700 drawings – including Munch's 200 sketchbooks – and photographs taken by the artist.
The museum is also home to one of two painted versions of Munch's most famous works, The Scream, which was stolen, along with his Madonna, by masked gunmen in 2004 and, mercifully, recovered in 2006. It also has one of two pastel versions with the other setting a record for the most expensive artwork sold at auction when it was bought in New York last year for $120m (£73.9m).
Much of the Munch collection cannot be displayed and a spokesman said the new museum would be three times the size of the present building offering four times as much exhibition space.