all images © BIG

Danish Maritime Museum designed by Bjarke Ingels Group and welcomed more than 20 000 visitors in July 2015, making it the busiest month in the history of the institution. To compare in 2012 the annual visitation numbered just over 50,000 visitors for the whole year before they moved into their new home in the dry dock. Last year over 150,000 enjoyed learning about the Danish Maritime traditions a tripling of visitorship over the previous year, BIG announced on its website. 

"We are extremely pleased that so many guests choose to stop by M / S Museum of Maritime. We embrace a wide audience of both Danish and foreign guests, adults and children, architecture geeks, hipsters, ship captains and the general interested guest. We have recently shown that we are an international cultural attraction, and it is a position that we look forward to build on," says Ulla Tofte, who took over as director of the museum in May. The museum had last year 154,790 visitors, making it the 39th most visited attraction in Denmark in 2014, reported Danish Maritime Museum.

The Danish Maritime Museum is located in a unique historic and spatial context: between one of Denmark’s most important and famous buildings the Kronborg Castle and the Culture Yard - a new, ambitious cultural center. BIG proposed to place the museum underground, just outside the wall of the dock in order to preserve the dock as an open, outdoor display, maintaining the powerful structure as the center of the Maritime Museum.

By placing the museum this way, it appears as part of the cultural environment associated with the Kronborg castle and the neighboring Culture Yard, while at the same time manifesting itself as an independent institution. The dock creates a museum space as a cohesive floor plan which discreetly becomes lower and lower across the entire museum length. Simple accessibility ramps and bridges are added, cutting through the dock in a structural and sculptural way.

Danish Maritime Museum received many prestigious awards: 2015 Rum Magazine Award Best Architecture Of The Year, 2015 Aia National Honor Award For Architecture, 2014 World Architecture Festival Cultural Category Winner, 2014 Riba Awards European National Winner, 2014 European Prize Of Architecture Philippe Rotthier, 2014 Danmarks Rederiforenings Søfartspris, 2014 Architizer A+ Awards Jury Winner, 2014 Aiany Design Awards Honor Award, 2014 Archdaily Cultural Building Of The Year, 2014 Detail Prize, 2014 Al Light & Architecture Design Awards.

Project Facts

Project: Danish National Maritime Museum

Year: 2013

Type: Invited Competition

Client: Helsingør Municipality, Helsingør Maritime Museum

Collaborators: Alectia, Kossmann.dejong, Rambøll, Freddy Madsen Ingeniører, Kibisi

Size: 5000m2

Location: Helsingør, Dk

Status: Completed

Partner in charge: Bjarke Ingels, David Zahle

Project leader: David Zahle

Team members: John Pries Jensen, Henrik Kania, Ariel Joy Norback Wallner, Rasmus Pedersen, Annette Jensen, Dennis Rasmussen, Jan Magasanik, Jeppe Ecklon, Karsten Hammer Hansen, Rasmus Rodam, Rune Hansen, Alina Tamosiunaite, Alysen Hiller, Ana Merino, Armen Menendian, Andy Yu, Andreas Johansen, Baptiste Blot, Christian Alvarez, Christin Svensson, Claudia Hertrich, Claudio Moretti, Cory Mattheis, Eskild Nordbud, Felicia Guldberg, Finn Nørkjær, Gül Ertekin, Jan Borgstrøm, James Schrader, Johan Cool, Jonas Mønster, Kirstine Ragnhild, Malte Kloe, Michael Andersen, Michal Kristof, Marc Jay, Maria Mavriku, Masatoshi Oka, Oana Simionescu, Pablo Labra, Peter Rieff, Qianyi Lim, Sara Sosio, Sebastian Latz, Tina Lund Højgaard, Tina Troster, Todd Bennet, Xi Chen, Xing Xiong, Xu Li, Zoltan Kalaszi

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