In the coming weeks, the country’s top heritage conservation authority will decide whether to grant a permit for the project. Artists and journalists have raised concerns in the Norwegian news media that it would alter the last remnants of the landscape Munch painted and would overshadow the historical importance of the site.

The design for the house, like a black crystalline U.F.O. resting on several columns shaped like woodland animals, emerged from expressive drawings Mr. Melgaard provided to Snohetta, the architecture firm behind the opera house on the Oslo waterfront and the National September 11 Memorial Museum in Manhattan. Snohetta argues that the Melgaard project represents a unique fusion of art and architecture, and that the concerns about the landscape are unfounded.

Mr. Melgaard, who is gay, also suggested that the opposition was partly fueled by homophobia.

In an interview, he said that the house’s unofficial moniker had emerged from his desire to invert Scandinavian architectural ideas around durability. “Nothing continues forever, so I was interested in the notion that you can have a house to die in, where you say, ‘It’s my end station,’ ” he said.

He was also inspired by the homes of drug lords, like the poppy palaces of Afghan opium barons, which are not just haunted by the specter of death, he said, but also “have these crazy mixes of architectural styles.”