FLUGT – Refugee Museum of Denmark

Oksbøl

GOAL no. 10, 16

The largest refugee camp in Danish history, located in a small town in western Jutland, has been transformed into a museum that tells both historical and contemporary refugee stories.

The world currently has an unprecedented number of refugees. Right now, an estimated 100 million people all over the world are forcibly displaced, fleeing war and persecution. Future climate change is expected to exacerbate the problem. In the media, we encounter refugees in dramatic images and numbers that can be difficult to grasp and relate to.

The Oksbøl Camp was the largest refugee camp in Denmark. At the end of WWII, as the Red Army advanced into Germany, many civilians fled to Denmark, and at its peak, the camp was home to about 35,000 German refugees. The camp formed a community with its own theatre, hospital, shops and workplaces.

The FLUGT museum (the name literally means ‘to escape’) tells the story of the refugee camp as well as present-day international refugee stories. It is housed in a building formed by two former hospital wings linked by a new, curved building clad in Corten steel. The new structure forms a bright and spacious breathing space in between the two sombre exhibitions. In the woodland around the museum, visitors can take an audio walk along the camp’s original paths and streets and visit the old refugee cemetery.

The principal figures in the exhibition are the more recent refugees stemming from Russia, Germany, Hungary, Vietnam, Chile, Lebanon, Iran, Bosnia, Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine and other countries. The presentation puts faces on the refugee crisis and offers insights into individual refugees’ thoughts and reflections – from their decision to flee to their arrival in a new country, adaptation to a new homeland and hopes for the future.

This project demonstrates how architecture can bring past and present together and promote reflection and understanding of a difficult and urgent issue.

Project details

Where: Præstegårdsvej 21, 6840 Oksbøl

Completed: 2022

Client: Varde Municipality/Vardemuseerne

Architects and advisors: BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group, Ingeniør’ne (engineer), Tinker Imagineers (exhibition design), BIG Landscape, BIG Ideas, Gade & Mortensen Akustik (acoustics), HB Trapper