Repurposing art and architecture into a new experience

Compiled by TeamIAnD

Renders: Courtesy SHLArchitects

Read Time: 2 mins 

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Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects reveal designs for ARoS "Next Level" in collaboration with renowned American artist James Turrell...

The Next Level expansion project of the ARoS Aarhus Art Museum in Denmark is leading art towards new ways of expression and content that will merge art and architecture into a new civic experience.

 

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Designed to be the largest museum art project by world-renowned American artist James Turrell, the new extension will contain several new facilities including a 1,200 sq. m. subterranean gallery and the gigantic semi-subterranean art installation, ‘The Dome’.

 

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As the original designers of ARoS in 2004, Schmidt Hammer Lassen has had a continuous relationship with the museum and its visionary director Erlend G. Høyersten, whose ideas drive the ambitious expansion plan. In 2011, a physical and artistic dimension was added to the museum with Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson's, "Your rainbow panorama", a permanent artwork hovering like a luminous circle and a visual link between the museum roof and the Aarhus skyline.

 

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Developing the museum horizontally in contrast to the existing vertical movement and working with the natural flow of the city from the river to the square of the Aarhus Music Hall, the Next Level project will connect to the existing building, thus referencing the main architectural concept of the museum building, which created a public route through the museum that transforms the building into a bridge linking two of the city's cultural centres.

 

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The new extension will also allow visitors to make a journey in a completely new dimension. An experience in colour and light that will bring the visitor into a string of galleries and exhibition spaces, stretching almost 120 metres below the surface to the 40m-dia Dome structure – constituting one of the most spectacular spaces ever built into an art museum!

 

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From the outside, The Next Level is will extend perpendicularly from ARoS's current main entrance to the forecourt of the neighbouring 'Officerspladsen' square. The Dome will rise nine metres above ground level. Ingeniously designed, whilst the first two underground galleries are almost completely hidden, only a change in the landscape hints at the larger building hidden under the ramp.

 

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As one of the world's leading artists working with light and colours, James Turrell has permanent installations in over 26 countries. His works have the common feature that they embrace the audience through light and colour effects; his works reminiscent of three-dimensional light paintings, where he connects the earthly with the heavenly and body and sense with mind and thought. The Next Level is his biggest project within a museum context, and scheduled to open for the public in 2020.