Denmark's bunker Vogelnest (Tirpitz) turned into a museum

[nobodyofnote]

Inside the Shell of an Old Bunker, Denmark’s WWII History Comes Alive



Bjarke Ingels Group’s latest project is a museum and visitor’s center in a subterranean bunker built by the German occupiers during World War II. The abandoned bunkers dot most of Europe’s coastlines, barnacle-covered hulks that remind us of the embattled continent of our grandparents’ childhoods. Other architects have thought to repurpose them, as temporary camping sites or even data storage centers. Denmark’s largest bunker, called Tirpitz, was left incomplete by the Germans in 1944. Right now, concerts and art shows are held within its moss-covered walls. Soon, if all goes according to plan, the bunker will be part of a 7,500-square foot development called the Blåvand Bunker Museum.

Tirpitz is embedded into sandy, coastal hills next to the coast of the North Sea. BIG proposes maintaining the continuity of the natural landscape by embedding most of the proposed exhibition space beneath the dunes. Four open-air troughs will connect the four subterranean spaces, terminating together at a square courtyard space nestled below the sand. Each of the cut-outs leads to a separate exhibition hall, which will function independently when the museum opens.

As for the hulking bunker itself, the architects imagine something more obvious: a glass-and-steel recreation of the stationary gun that might have sat on its concrete turret. Inside, the gun’s two barrels will host telescopes, rather than artillery. It’s a "ghost or reflection of the war machine it was meant to be," write the architects, "at once critical and respectful of the bunker architecture." More pragmatically, it’s also a skylight, flooding the bunker with light. A transparent staircase leads down into the gloom below.

Some are questioning whether the museum’s four-pronged plan could have been better chosen, suggesting that the cut-outs are reminiscent of a swastika. That seems a bit hasty, since right now in plan we see only a square courtyard with a straight line jutting from each corner. The past two years have been filled with similarly unintentional faux pas, like MVRDV’s “9/11 tower” scheme in South Korea. But in both cases, any shared likeness with symbols of tragedy seems completely unintentional. Some might argue that if contemporary architects should be condemned for anything, it’s their devotion to such unironic literalism. Someone needs to get Robert Venturi or Denise Scott Brown on the horn and ask them to weigh in on this.

Source: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1670493/ins ... omes-alive (Fast Company Design, 10th August 2012).

[SES]

Nice article. For the sake of accuracy it may be called Tirpitz, but the official name of the battery was VOGELNEST and it is a far cry from being the largest German bunker built in Denmark. That was the Jafü SK of 39.000 cbm, built on Flg.Hrst. Grove.
bregds
SES

[nobodyofnote]

Thanks SES

[SES]

My pleasure.
bregds
SES

[kstdk]

Hello all

Please also see here:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set= ... 041&type=3

Regards
Kurt
kstdk

[TH]

Interesting, is this just a proposal or already a done deal?
Wonder if they are going to blow up the construction platform north of the bunker for those subterranean exhibition rooms. That'd be a bit sad.

[M.S.Jensen]

It only a proposal so far but it they get the 50 mill dkk and the permits it will in some form berealised. And yes, the construction platform north of the bunker will demolised..

Regards
Morten

[jopaerya]

Could this be the Tirpitz battery ?? Picture a expired Ebay auction .

Regards Jos

[kstdk]

Hello

Dont think so, because the guns never arrived at the buildingsite.

They were standing at a Railway station nearby (at Guldager).

It was also a 38 cm. battery not 40 cm.!!!

What this one is, I do not know - but could it be Norway??

Regards
Kurt
kstdk

[Jens Andersen]

Hi

I don't think it is "Tirpitz"/"Vogelnest" either.

As Kurt says the gun tubes never came to the site, and terrain is quite different - dunes. So, my guess would also be Norway.

Jens

[jopaerya]

Thanks Friends

[ludvig]

Hello
J belive the photo posted is from MKB 6./ 501 Nötteröy and the gun
is an 38 cm KM 38 / 35 ( f ) . It looks as the gun emplacement is number
one in the battery .

ludvig

[jopaerya]

Thanks Ludvig

That is a very good option .

Regards Jos

[jopaerya]

Picture's from Ebay , Regards Jos

[kstdk]

Hello

These are very well known pictures from Vogelnest at Blåvand.

I think - it could be "reproductions" Photos - there is a whole series of them printed on postcards.

They are all taken after the war - 1945 - 1946 and are showing the dismantling of the site and scrapping of the guns.

Regards
Kurt
kstdk