Nordic lantern.

Spectacularly set on an island overlooking the city, Stockholm's Moderna Museet reflects the urbanistic and topographic character of its site and reinterprets the traditional Swedish use of strong external colour.

The completion earlier this year of Sweden's new Museum of Modern Art (Moderna Museet) underpinned Stockholm's tenure as 1998 European City of Culture. The new museum provides space for the national collections of twentieth-century art and photographs, as well as the Swedish architectural archive. Originally housed in a nineteenth-century drill hall on the island of Skeppsholmen, the Moderna Museet has long been in pressing need of expansion. In spite of various improvements to the original building, the museum rapidly evolved, both physically and conceptually, beyond its impromptu beginnings in the mid 1950s.(1) Only a fraction of the collection could be shown and much of this had to be stored to make way for large temporary exhibitions. The incorporation of the national photographic collection in 1973 exacerbated the problem of space and the building lacked permanent facilities for presenting the museum's pioneering collection of artists' films and videos. By the end of the 1980s, Moderna was simply too cramped for its skin and drastic action was needed.

In 1990 the Swedish government instigated a competition for the museum's redevelopment. Open to all Swedish architects and five invited foreigners,(2) the complex brief included a museum of contemporary art, a museum of architecture, a dedicated gallery for temporary exhibitions, facilities for showing film and video and a library. Intended to provide an extra 20 000 sq m of public space, the new development effectively quadrupled the museum's existing capacity. In view of the competition's evident and understandable bias towards Scandinavian architects, it was perhaps surprising that the winner should be a southern European, Rafael Moneo. However the jury's decision was not as unexpected as it might seem. As a student, Moneo worked in Utzon's office and travelled extensively around Scandinavia, absorbing the influences of Asplund, Lewerentz and Aalto.

Moneo's Moderna Museet is unequivocally contemporary, yet its also seeks to reflect the topographic and urbanistic character of its site. Set like a green lung in the centre of Stockholm's harbour, the tiny island of Skeppsholmen was formerly a base for the Swedish navy. Since the navy's departure in the 1950s, the nineteenth-century barracks and admiralty buildings have been appropriated for various cultural functions, including a theatre, school of fine arts and the Museum of Oriental Antiquities. Crowned by Fredrik Blom's octagonal church, the island's rocky outcrops afford splendid vistas across the harbour to one of the most remarkable skylines in the Baltic.

The Moderna Museet is set on a ridge on Skeppsholm's eastern edge. To the west lies the linear volume of the Museum of Oriental Antiquities, housed in a former rope-walk. Taking advantage of the steep terrain, the new building is excavated into the rock, minimizing its bulk. The resulting parti is both elegant and economical. A sequence of toplit, pavilion-like galleries occupies the main ground floor, with assorted cultural and administrative facilities arranged on two lower subterranean levels. The cluster of linked pavilions consciously echoes the incremental, anti-monumental character of the island's architecture. On its south side, the new building is joined to the existing drill hall, now transformed into the Museum of Architecture. This in turn is united with a sleek, white rendered volume, also designed by Moneo, housing architectural archives, offices and a library.

The exterior is at its most striking when viewed from some distance across the harbour. The roofscape of angular lanterns recalls the familiar historic forms of maritime architecture and boat building cranes. At dusk the dark mass of the museum is articulated by the soft glow of light diffused through the pyramidal roofs. Moneo intended that the museum should appear to evolve organically out of the ridge, and initially stipulated a pale grey render for the exterior, which would also contrast with the traditional Swedish yellow ochre of the surrounding buildings. This was modified following discussions with the city planners, who felt that grey would be too drab in Stockholm's Nordic climate. The final compromise is a rich terracotta, possibly more Mediterranean than Nordic, but enticingly partnered with a grey zinc roof. The terracotta also serves to emphasize the building's inscrutable, alcazar-like quality; the arrangement of neutral, toplit containers enclosed by a blind wall has obvious affinities with Spanish architecture.

From the main public approach on the west side, the museum's presence is virtually underectable, concealed behind a long stone wall. An understated portico leads through to a generously proportioned entrance hall, the building's organizational fulcrum. From here you can begin the circuit of galleries, or move through to the adjoining Architecture Museum. On axis lies the museum's restaurant, a transparent volume theatrically cantilevered out over the ridge with thrilling views of the harbour. A broad flight of limestone stairs leads down to the cinema, library and blind box exhibition spaces on the lower levels. The architecture is vertically led, with the lantern-lights and cupolas of the galleries generating the geometry of the rooms, and the lower floors serving as a supportive foundation for the piano nobile gallery level. Verticality and the relationship of vertical elements have preoccupied Moneo for some time, for instance the Roman Museum at Merida (AR November 1985) with its tall brick vaults and the Davis Museum at Wellesley College in Massachusetts which explores a similar system of interlocking roof lanterns.

Moderna reflects the landscape of Skeppsholmen, but is also itself a landscape, an aggregation of linked parts. The lantern-lit galleries are each independent entities, varying in size around a 6 metre square module, but they also make up groups of six or seven rooms that create separate figures of their own. These groupings are arranged off a spinal corridor that runs along the west side of the building, overlooking a narrow courtyard bounded by the long yellow flank of the Museum of Oriental Antiquities. The largest single gallery is an imposing 18m square hall for temporary exhibitions, that can be subdivided as required. Three clusters of smaller galleries house the museum's permanent collection of contemporary art, international avant garde, and twentieth-century Swedish painting. Changes of axis and informal massing give the spaces a mazelike complexity and intimacy. Plain oak floors bordered with strips of limestone reinforce the museum's theme of material refinement and austerity. Cool, white gallery walls are washed with a very low level of natural light (a curatorial imperative), filtered through fixed louvres in the lanterns. Unobtrusive spotlights set around the ceiling edges come into play on gloomier days.

Anchored to the living rock of the island, Moderna is a response to the fragmented geography of Stockholm, rich in accident and surprise. The museum's orthogonal geometry tactfully overlays nature, but does not subdue it. In the Swedish tradition of minimal intervention, it combines discretion and seriousness of purpose, yet it also has a powerful civic presence, particularly when seen from afar, and makes a dignified and dramatic addition to Stockholm's skyline.

1 In 1953 the painter Otte Skold (at one time director of the Swedish National Art Collections) persuaded the government to create a museum specifically for twentieth-century art. In 1956 work began on converting the former naval drill hall (the House of Exercise) on Skeppsholmen and in the same year Picasso's Guernica was shown in the partially converted building. In 1958 Moderna Museet was formally inaugurated.

2 The five invited non Swedish architects were Tadao Ando (Japan), Kristian Gullichsen (Finland), Jorn Utzon (Denmark), Frank Gehry (USA) and Rafael Moneo (Spain). Gehry chose not to submit an entry.

Architect Rafael Moneo. Madrid. Spain

Project architects Rafael Moneo, Belen Moneo, Jeff Brock

Associate architect White Arkitekter

Structural engineer Tyrens Byggkonsult

Interior designer Thomas Sandell

Photographs Duccio Malagamba