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The Wadden Sea Centre RIBE
Figure 53 Facade
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Figure 54 North facade
Figure 55 South facade
Figure 56 Interior An example of a modern vernacular project honouring Danish building traditions is the Wadden Sea Centre by Dorte Mandrup Architects. The shape of the building seems to illuminate out of the ground, as the transition between the flat land and the rise of the building is meeting each other in the intersection by the empathically shaped thatched roof. The thatched roof is massive and dominating for the overall design. It suits well with the harsh and salty environment in which the Wadden Sea Centre is located, because the salt from the Wadden Sea has a protective and impregnate effect on the straw. As the straw of the roof is an agricultural waste product and harvested from the surrounding fields, and since thatched roofing is characterized as a traditional Danish building code, that dates decades back, the architecture can be characterized as vernacular architecture (Troelsen, 2017).
This project secures its contemporariness by using the natural and wild materials in a very modern, tight and formal manner; the surfaces are finished evenly and stringently, which makes the building associate minimalistic and modernistic architecture. As a visitor you can physically feel the tactility of the sleek thatched surfaces, making one acknowledge the magnificence of nature within a tamed piece of nature.
The Wadden Sea Centre is relevant to this project, since it is likewise placed into open land with tremendous nature surrounding it, since the use of natural materials in a contemporary manner is inspirational and finally, the way this rather big building volume meet and relates to the ground and human scale, without being too strident, is exemplary.
“…We have chosen the building to be sculptural and embedded into its surroundings, so that it will seem like it is growing up from the ground” - Dorte Mandrup (Troelsen, 2017)
