Andenes, Norway, approximately 185 miles north of the Arctic Circle, is one of the best places in the world for whale watching. Just a few miles from shore lies the deep sea valley, Bleiksdjupa, where migrating whales frequently pass by, and soon, a new “whale” will be spotted sandwiched between the edge of the ocean and the rocky Norwegian shore.
This Whale isn’t a large aquatic mammal, but an arctic attraction that rises like a soft hill out of the Norwegian landscape as if “a giant had lifted a thin layer of the crust of the earth and created a cavity underneath.” The project, which recently won an international design competition, was designed by Dorte Mandrup, together with Marianne Levinsen Landskab, JAC Studio, Thornton Tomasetti, AT Plan & Arkitektur, Nils Øien and Anders Kold.
The building will house exhibition spaces, offices, a cafe, and a store. Large windows open toward the archipelago to create a visual connection between the exhibition spaces and the natural surroundings.
See Also: New London aparthotel is made entirely from shipping containers
Visitors to The Whale can walk on the building’s curved roof for views of the ocean, the mountains, the midnight sun, or the northern lights. The roof will be covered with stones that naturally patinate and underline the connection between the Norwegian landscape and the building. The roof’s parabolic form transmits the forces to three support points in the corners of the building to create a large, column-free inner room.
The Whale’s goals are to strengthen Northern Norway as a travel destination and protect the marine environment and its wildlife through art, science, and architecture. “Not only will we be creating architecture in yet another remarkable landscape, but we will also take part in increasing the understanding of whales and preservation of marine life,” said Founder and Creative Director, Dorte Mandrup. “Right here on the edge of the ocean, we will be making a mark in a magnificent and ancient landscape.
The building is slated to open in 2022.
Related Stories
| Aug 11, 2010
Financial Wizardry Builds a Community
At 69 square miles, Vineland is New Jersey's largest city, at least in geographic area, and it has a rich history. It was established in 1861 as a planned community (well before there were such things) by the utopian Charles Landis. It was in Vineland that Dr. Thomas Welch found a way to preserve grape juice without fermenting it, creating a wine substitute for church use (the town was dry).
| Aug 11, 2010
Team Tames Impossible Site
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the nation's oldest technology university, has long prided itself on its state-of-the-art design and engineering curriculum. Several years ago, to call attention to its equally estimable media and performing arts programs, RPI commissioned British architect Sir Nicholas Grimshaw to design the Curtis R.
| Aug 11, 2010
Silver Award: Hanna Theatre, Cleveland, Ohio
Between February 1921 and November 1922 five theaters opened along a short stretch of Euclid Avenue in downtown Cleveland, all of them presenting silent movies, legitimate theater, and vaudeville. During the Great Depression, several of the theaters in the unofficial “Playhouse Square” converted to movie theaters, but they all fell into a death spiral after World War II.
| Aug 11, 2010
Biograph Theater
Located in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood, Victory Gardens Theater Company has welcomed up-and-coming playwrights for 33 years. In 2004, the company expanded its campus with the purchase of the Biograph Theater for its new main stage. Built in 1914, the theater was one of the city's oldest remaining neighborhood movie houses, and it was part of Chicago's gangster lore: in 1934, John Dillin...
| Aug 11, 2010
Top of the rock—Observation deck at Rockefeller Center
Opened in 1933, the observation deck at Rockefeller Center was designed to evoke the elegant promenades found on the period's luxury transatlantic liners—only with views of the city's skyline instead of the ocean. In 1986 this cultural landmark was closed to the public and sat unused for almost two decades.
| Aug 11, 2010
Putting the Metal to the Petal
The Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine was founded in 1985, but the organization didn't have a permanent home until May 2008. That's when the Michael Klahr Center, which houses the HHRC, opened on the Augusta campus of the University of Maine. The design, by Boston-based architects Shepley Bulfinch Richardson & Abbott, was selected from among more than 200 entries in a university-s...
| Aug 11, 2010
Jefferson Would Be Proud
The Virginia State Capitol Building—originally designed by Thomas Jefferson and almost as old as the nation itself—has proudly served as the oldest continuously used Capitol in the U.S. But more than two centuries of wear and tear put the historical landmark at the head of the line for restoration.
| Aug 11, 2010
Let There Be Daylight
The new public library in Champaign, Ill., is drawing 2,100 patrons a day, up from 1,600 in 2007. The 122,600-sf facility, which opened in January 2008, certainly benefits from amenities that the old 40,000-sf library didn't have—electronic check-in and check-out, new computers, an onsite coffeehouse.
| Aug 11, 2010
American Tobacco Project: Turning over a new leaf
As part of a major revitalization of downtown Durham, N.C., locally based Capitol Broadcasting Company decided to transform the American Tobacco Company's derelict 16-acre industrial plant, which symbolized the city for more than a century, into a lively and attractive mixed-use development. Although tearing down and rebuilding the property would have made more economic sense, the greater goal ...
| Aug 11, 2010
Bronze Award: Alumni Gymnasium Renovation, Dartmouth College Hanover, N.H.
At a time when institutions of higher learning are spending tens of millions of dollars erecting massive, cutting-edge recreation and fitness centers, Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., decided to take a more modest, historical approach. Instead of building an ultra-grand new facility, the university chose to breathe new life into its landmark Alumni Gymnasium by transforming the outdated 99-y...
