Going Underground

BIG’s Tirpitz museum opens in Blåvand, Denmark.

Photos
Rasmus Hjortshøj

BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) has completed Tirpitz, an ‘invisible museum’ partly buried into the shoreline of Blåvand in western Denmark. Transforming and expanding a historic German second world war bunker, the 2800-square-metre building comprises four exhibition spacess and is expected to attract around 100,000 visitors annually.

In contrast to the heavy construction of the original artillery emplacement, the museum is conceived as a series of precise, intersecting cuts in landscape. “The architecture of the TIRPITZ is the antithesis of the bunker”, explains Bjarke Ingels. “The heavy hermetic object is countered by the inviting lightness and openness of the new museum. The galleries are integrated into the dunes like an open oasis in the sand – a sharp contrast to the Nazi fortress’ concrete monolith.”

A series of sunken walkways leads to a central courtyard from which the four underground gallery spaces are accessed. Designed by Tinker Imagineers, the exhibitions comprise both permanent and temporary displays. ‘Army of Concrete’ tells human stories relating to Hitler’s enormous defense project, the Atlantic Wall; ‘Gold of the West Coast’ is a display of amber presented in an ‘amber forest’; ‘West Coast Stories’ showcases 100,000 years of west coast history, and is transformed into a 4D theatre twice an hour. Visitors can gain access to the bunker from the sunken galleries, and in the dark are able to activate shadow plays that reveal how the structure originally functioned.

The building is constructed from four principal materials that are common to the local area: concrete, steel, glass and wood. Providing structural support for a series of roof decks that cantilever out 36 metres, the walls of the exhibition spaces are made from in-situ concrete. Inside, the main materials in the gallery spaces are wood and hot rolled steel. Six-metre-high glass panels line the outdoor courtyard, allowing natural daylight into the exhibition spaces.