ARoS Museum of Art, Aarhus, Denmark

A Breathtaking Cultural Experience

ARoS is the cultural centerpiece of Denmark’s second largest city, and one of the largest museums of its kind in Northern Europe. The building frames a public thoroughfare that links two of the city’s cultural centers. This public route through the museum encourages dynamic interplay between the museum and everyday life.

Client: Aarhus Municipality
Size: 190,521 square feet
Completion Date: 2004

Awards:
Aarhus Municipality’s Architecture Prize, 2014
FX Awards Best Museum, 2004
InSitu Prize, 2004

ARoS Museum of Art is the cultural centerpiece of Aarhus, and one of the largest museums of its kind in Northern Europe.

A spectacular spiral staircase rises up from the museum walkway -- a sculptural form wrapping around two elevator shafts, together providing dramatic connections to the exhibition galleries.

High-level bridges traverse the ‘canyon’ of the atrium space, creating connections between the two core areas of the museum.

In 2011, “Your Rainbow Panorama,” a permanent art piece by Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, was added to the museum.

Hovering like a luminous circle above the building, it allows visitors to walk through a rainbow and provides spectacular views of the city filtered through every gradation of color.

ARoS has ambitious expansion plans aimed at keeping the museum within the world elite of modern art museums. “The Next Level “expansion project is leading art towards new ways of expressions and content with an exciting collaboration with World renowned American artist, James Turrell. The expansion will contain a 1,200 m2 subterranean gallery and two semi-subterranean art installations, ‘The Sphere’ and ‘The Dome’. Schmidt Hammer Lassen is working in close collaboration with the artist designing the €30 million expansion that will merge art and architecture into a new civic experience.

ARoS Museum of Art, Aarhus, Denmark

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