Archive for November 15th, 2009

Catalytic Connector – Museum of Natural History, Copenhagen.

Sunday, November 15th, 2009

Rocker-Lange Architects are releasing their competition entry for Denmark’s New Museum of Natural History in Copenhagen.

View_01,Rocker Lange Architects, Museum of Natural History, Competition, Copenhagen, Christian J Lange

The proposed scheme serves urbanistically as well as architecturally as a catalytic connector: it connects and enhances the existing buildings with which it creates the new Museum of Natural History. It creates a visual marker in the city signaling the national and international importance of the new institution. The result is an open welcoming museum complex, embedded in the beautiful landscape of the botanic garden, surrounded by the traditional – renovated – brick buildings of the Geologisk Museum and the Solvtorvskomplekset.

Plan, Rocker Lange Architects, Museum of Natural History, Competition, Copenhagen, Christian J Lange


Embedded within the landscape the museum functions quite literally as a interlocutor between the natural- and the cultural-scape. Both the park- and the urban-scape flow in and through the building, creating public interior and exterior plazas, allowing for views onto the giant whale and dinosaur skeletons in the museum’s exhibition halls.

Rocker Lange Architects, Museum of Natural History, Copenhagen, Christian J Lange

3 major exhibition areas traverse the new museum reflecting the different exhibition areas: Fauna, Flora, and Geology. The meandering paths traverse the exhibitions providing spectacular overviews and close insights into the museum’s collections.

Rocker Lange Architects, Museum of Natural History, Competition, Copenhagen, Christian J Lange

A variety of different spaces are inscribed in the building’s envelope: larger and smaller exhibition zones alternate, and special media presentation spaces are also provided. On the open floors swarms of animal species can be admired while in the smaller rooms carefully elaborated analysis are on display.