Shared Storage Facility for the Royal Danish Library and National Museum | Gottlieb Paludan Architects

Gottlieb Paludan Architects, in association with DS Flexhal and MOE, has designed the Agency for Culture and Palaces’ Shared storage facility near Frederikssund.

The Danish Agency for Culture and Palaces are building Fællesmagasinet in Vinge near Frederikssund - a building which will function as a shared storage facility for the Royal Danish Libarry and the National Museum of Denmark. The facility will house cultural heritage objects of very high national value, calling for a building with great climatic stability, robust constructional solutions and a high level of security. The building must be constructed for a very low square metre price while at the same time offering an architectural design that reflects the cultural value of the contents and meets the stringent requirements of logistics and security. 

The Joint Depot is to be positioned at the top of the site with a view across the cultural landscape. The facility will be divided into four individually scannable building masses of varying heights in order to cushion its enormous size. The depot will be constructed from light concrete panels with a concave front plate providing a soft and varying shadow figure on the façade, accentuating the simple principle underlying the construction system.

The concave façades are reminiscent of fluted cannelures from the orders of columns of classical architecture and thus relate to the National Museum and the Royal Library’s collections, which forge a connection between Danish culture and other cultural trends that have shaped developments in Denmark.