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Ordrupgaard Museum Extension

Ordrupgaard Museum Extension
Roland Halbe

exhibition space in Copenhagen

The growth of the institution presents an opportunity to explore new formal relationships between the components of the museum and the garden that frames it, in so far that the ensemble constitutes a kind of topography in itself. The new extension seeks to establish a new landscape within the territory of its architecture, at the same time allowing new relations with the existing conditions. The logic of the existing landscape is abstracted in the geometry; new contours extend into the collection developing an alternate ground where occupancy and use are extended.


The buildings separate two distinct conditions of the garden and responds to them with a gradation of use that is represented by a change in transparency and access possibilities. The contour lines, which form the basis of the extension’s morphology, are explored in a two-fold manner: they conform the overall enclosure at the same time they lay down the basis for the arrangement of the interior space. Variation on the existing topography can be read as a progression through the interior spaces, and thus a signal for transition between uses. An interior landscape presents the visitor with a layered experience where the museum’s space relates to the garden.


The edge of the building is altered by the topography and presents the opportunity of blurring traditional conditions of use and occupancy in museum projects. The art galleries are nested within an outer public route that links the different compartments through openings on the structural shell. The visitor’s experience is not limited to the building, but the contents it houses should be read already from the different approaches it offers. The critique of the edge is thus replaced by a notion of fluid interaction between the garden and the interior programme, and it acts a constant instrument of gradation that allows for different conditions to appear without necessary breaking the volume up.

Project credits

Project data

Project Year
2005
Category
Bars
Museums
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