Maritime Museum in Denmark. Between the dock and the quay: the sculptural Architecture is excavated into the slope

Using a unique context, the Danish Big Studio designs the Helsingor Maritime Museum, embedding it in the dock behind the pier and highlighting the depression of the land with glass and ramps.

Glass and ramps are the project keys used by the Danish-Big studio to highlight this architect, the Helsingor Maritime Museum, which is embedded in a unique context because of the depression of the land.

The Danish Maritime Museum is located in a unique historical and spatial context for the city, between one of Denmark's most important and famous buildings, the Kronborg Castle and the Culture Shipyard, an ambitious new cultural centre. The project must therefore reflect the concept of the connection between the two buildings and this is done by using the difference in height of the land.

From the outset, the studio proposed placing the underground museum, which was lower than the street level, just outside the pier wall, to maintain the quay as an open, usable outdoor space, preserving the powerful structure of the Museum in the centre.

By positioning the museum in this way, a spatial and conceptual connection appears as part of the cultural environment associated with Kronborg Castle and the nearby Cultural Shipyard. At the same time, it manifests itself as an independent institution, given the geometric and monumental shape of the project, which, thanks also to the use of contemporary materials such as glass and steel, is well detached from the other two buildings.

The dock creates a museum space like a cohesive layout that discreetly becomes lower and lower along the entire length of the museum. Simple ramps and accessibility bridges are added, carving out the quay in a structural and sculptural way. In the interior, the spaces continue to reflect this concept, through the use of linearity, between suspended ceilings and wooden corridors, which is lost only in the exhibition halls.