In Copenhagen’s art and architecture landscape, Ordrupgaard Museum is somewhat of an insider tip. Located in Charlottenlund, north of Copenhagen, it has one of the best collections of French Impressionists in Scandinavia, along with Danish art from the 19th and early 20th centuries, such as by Eckersberg and Hammershøi. It was originally the home of insurance magnate and art collector Wilhelm Hansen, who had his country manor built on the large estate in 1916–18. It is surrounded by an English-style landscape garden and a smaller, French-inspired rose garden.
The gardens have been an important source of inspiration for the museum’s two extensions since the turn of the millennium. In 2005, Zaha Hadid Architects doubled the exhibition space with an extension to the north, which has since also served as the main entrance. For the second extension, an architectural competition in 2012 called for 1,800 m² of additional floor space to be located underground. Snøhetta fulfilled this requirement with a radically different interpretation of the landscape than Hadid. With its anthracite-coloured concrete curves, the building by the London-based architect was intended as an extension of the site’s natural topography. In contrast, the Oslo-based architects envisioned the visible part of their building as a “parterre” in the style of French baroque gardens. The monolithic, stainless steel structure rises up out of a recessed paved area. A diagonal concrete walkway slices through it, offering the most direct route to the museum entrance. The faceted metal surface of the sculptural roof refracts the light like the paintings of the Impressionists, who mastered the depiction of such natural phenomena.
Below the steel-coated structure lies the largest of five new subterranean exhibition spaces, which links to the existing exhibition areas to create a continuous path through the museum collection. Two of the new spaces, kept in neutral white and connected by a double-height air space, extend the space for temporary exhibitions provided by the Hadid building. The other three exhibition spaces are for the Impressionist collection, invoking the spirit of the Belle Époque with their oak floors, walls, and ceilings and muted green wall panels. The underground spaces rely on artificial lighting; two stairwells are the only source of natural daylight. Their link to the outer world therefore remains purely formal: the faceted surface of the wooden ceilings echo that of the steel roof, as if it had pushed through the layers of insulation and concrete to leave an impression.
