The Tirpitz Museum is located in Blåvand on the west coast of Denmark. The entire area that is home to the new exhibition centre is clearly identifiable and recognizable because of the presence of one of the military bunkers of the “Atlantic Wall”, testimony to the passage of Nazi troops and symbol of the final stages of World War II. The area is characterized by a harsh and imposing landscape that is so symbolically rich in history that it somehow convinced Bjarke Ingels to take a step back and seemingly give up on the more usual formal or spectacular solutions or original typological exercises in order to create what has been called an ‘invisible museum’.
It is divided into four independent blocks whose boundaries are underlined by fissures in the ground that mark the presence of the museum from the outside.
The layout is central with the focal point occupied by a large open courtyard that determines the point where the cracks in the ground come together, paths whose reunion results in a common space.
Bearing in mind the lesson of the Ferrater fitness centre in Barcelona, the new BIG building has been skilfully entombed beneath the ground’s undulating surface but unlike the Spanish architecture, the use of a rotational movement does not distort the whole geometry of the construction, rather reflecting on the separators that divide the foyer from the exhibition spaces, thereby creating four independent entrances to the constituent blocks of the museum which can thus function autonomously.
PROJECT Tirpitz
ARCHITECT BIG
LOCATION Blåvand, Denmark
YEAR 2017
PHOTO Laurian Ghinitoiu, Rasmus Hjortshøj and Frederik Lyng
BIOGRAPHY
BIG IS A GROUP OF ARCHITECTS, DESIGNERS AND THINKERS OPERATING WITHIN THE FIELDS OF ARCHITECTURE, URBANISM, INTERIOR DESIGN, LANDSCAPE DESIGN, PRODUCT DESIGN, RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT WITH OFFICES IN NEW YORK CITY, COPENHAGEN AND LONDON. BIG HAS CREATED A REPUTATION FOR COMPLETING BUILDINGS THAT ARE AS PROGRAMMATICALLY AND TECHNICALLY INNOVATIVE AS THEY ARE COST AND RESOURCE CONSCIOUS.
MAIN PROJECTS
Via 57 West, New York, Usa, 2016
1200 Intrepid, Philadelphia, Usa, 2016
Danish Maritime Museum, Helsingor, Denmark, 2013
Superkilen, Nørrebro, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2012
The 8 House, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2010
Copenhagen Harbor Bath, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2003
