New standard for museum design?

Flemming Roth, Mid-South Jutland Museum (Midtsønderjyllands Museum)

Although we only had EUR 600,000 for a new museum building, we were able to achieve a design that - from an architectural point of view - is extremely exciting, innovative and functional.

For 28 years, Mid-South Jutland Museum was housed in the west wing of Gram Manor (Gram Slot), in southern Jutland.

The museum’s collections mainly consist of fossils collected in the Gram Clay Pits (Gram Lergrav). In fact, it is the clay pits that are the very basis for the museum’s existence. These pits contain fossils that date back 8 million years, relics from a sea that once partly covered what is now Denmark. The most spectacular finds from the clay pits are the many whale skeletons. For the last 30 years, these have been dug up, conserved and described. The whales have been restored to their rightful dignity after having been ripped and flayed by sharks millions of years ago, with their soft parts subsequently devoured by crabs and snails. However, the clay preserved their skeletons, and we can therefore now display them in the new Mid-South Jutland Museum near the Gram Clay Pits.

In 2002, the museum was threatened with closure until local politicians took on responsibility for its operation, and also suggested a new building - once the funds had been raised. That was the hard part. Although grants were received from the county, the municipality and the EU, it was also necessary to petition private and public foundations. Here the success rate was not very high, with most foundations turning down our applications. Finally, however, we acquired promises amounting to EUR 600,000 for the building and EUR 135,000 for exhibitions.

Because of these relatively limited funds, and to ensure that construction costs remained within the amount allocated, we decided to invite tenders - a so-called closed reverse tender for the entire contract - from four companies that were well known for building pavilion structures. This process involved telling the companies exactly what we wanted, the amount of space we required, and the quality we expected. It was then up to the companies to tell us how many of our conditions could be met for the amount of money available. This assured a fixed price for the building, and any overexpenditure would have to be met by the construction company.

The contract was won by the Vinderup Træbyg company, and the architect was Jane Willumsgaard, from the Søren Andersen Arkitekterne architects’ office. Jane Willumsgaard fully understood that the new museum was to be built in a countryside setting, and that this would place special demands on the design.

The new museum building consists mainly of four wooden pavilions, to be used as offices, a workshop, an exhibition room and a laboratory, respectively. Vinderup Træbyg prefabricated these on its own premises. Using a large crane, it took just one day to place all four pavilions on the foundations that had been laid specially for them. The layout might seem puzzling at first glance, as the pavilions were placed asymmetrically and staggered in relation to each other. However, the architect had been inspired by the way dry clay cracks - in irregular, uneven patterns. The four buildings are joined together by a 600-square-metre “flying” roof that half covers the pavilions and the largest of the exhibition spaces (with an area of 150 square metres). The roof and the pavilions are linked by a band of glass that runs right round the entire building. This provides light in the library and exhibition corridor, the outer walls of which are the pavilions themselves. The placement of these pavilions makes everything in the building asymmetrical. The corridors twist and turn, getting wider and narrower. One of the walls in the large exhibition space leans outwards, so that it feels like being in the bottom of a ship. It also narrows in at one end, in a manner reminiscent of the exhibition gallery at ARKEN, the Danish Museum of Modern Art.

The sizeable roof also extends over a large outdoor area, which includes a covered courtyard for displaying plants that also grew in the Miocene period, 8 million years ago. There is also room for the skeleton of a sperm whale, creating an illusion of the first step on the way to becoming a fossil. This skeleton lies “on a sea bed”, where it will be slowly covered by sediments carried out to sea by rivers. In a million years, it will have become fossilised.

The architect has designed a wooden building that is in harmony with its natural surroundings, and opens up to embrace them. There are views of the surrounding countryside from throughout the building, including the large panorama windows that link up the pavilions.

The roof, extending over the pavilions.

The museum corridor with a wiew into the laboratory.

The covered outdoor area.

Raising the standard

I am in no doubt that this building will set new standards for structures featuring conventional pavilions. It clearly demonstrates that a new museum can be built for a relatively small amount - and indeed be housed within an extremely interesting design.

In terms of floor space, the new museum in Gram is not particularly large. However, the special design, opening into the surrounding countryside, makes the building appear significantly larger than it actually is. We already had the Clay Pit House with an area of 150 square metres, and the new “extension” covers more than 400 square metres, plus a covered outdoor area with a wooden deck area of approximately 150 square metres. This means that all the costly space is being put to good use.

We have achieved our aim of building an interactive museum of natural history in a countryside setting near an internationally recognised geological fossil site. The museum is now - literally - situated on a sea bed that is 8 million years old and contains large numbers of fossilised animals. Visitors to the museum are encouraged to hunt for fossils in this sea bed. Finds that occur in large numbers can be kept and taken home, while bones and other finds suitable for exhibiting and of scientific interest must be handed in. Searching for fossils in the clay is a popular activity that appeals to all age groups. If visitors want to examine their finds in more detail, the museum laboratory is available. Visitors can clean off the clay and uncover quite small fossils, which they can then scrutinise under the microscopes at their disposal. They can then compare their own finds with those on display in the museum, and thus discover the name of the fossils they have found.

The new building is first and foremost a museum, with all the obligations that this entails. However, it is also a place where the general public - through their own efforts - can acquire greater understanding of early animal life on this planet and “our changing world”. This is because the clay pits at Gram tell the story of periods with global warming that resulted in Denmark “drowning”, prior to its subsequent revival as an area of land where it is now possible to dig for fossils from the Gram sea.

[back to text in English]