M/S Museet for Søfart

Why it is renowned

The museum's building by Bjarke Ingels Group won a RIBA EU Award and a World Architecture Festival award in the culture category in 2014, as well as an Architizer A+ Award.¹ The design magazine Frame ranked its exhibition second among the best new exhibition designs.¹

The story

The museum was founded in 1915 and was first housed in Kronborg Castle.¹ To keep the view of the castle clear, BIG placed the new museum below ground, wrapped around the walls of a disused dry dock 150 metres long and 9 metres deep; the dock itself stays open, crossed by ramps and bridges.¹ Funded by eleven foundations, it opened on 5 October 2013, with exhibitions designed by the Dutch firm Kossmann.dejong.¹ The collections cover Danish shipping and trade from the 15th century to the present: ship models, paintings, the trade with China and India, and more than 33,000 photographs of Danish ships since 1880.¹

What to know it by

• The dry dock2013Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG)Museum built below ground around a 150-metre dock
• The exhibitions2013Kossmann.dejongGalleries on six centuries of Danish shipping
• Photograph collectionOver 33,000 pictures of Danish ships since 1880