Our work as architects is often to realize other’s visions but it is not always easy to build a bridge between vision and reality.

Our neighbour was none less than Prince Hamlet’s Castle, with its fortifications, masonry, and tower skyline is one of Denmark’s greatest tourist attractions. And due to preserving the views of the Castle’s towers we were not allowed to even stick out a meter above the ground level.

We considered it architectural suicide to fill the dry dock with program and therefore decided to empty the dry dock and wrap it with the museum, making it the centrepiece of the exhibition. Instead of drowning the dry dock with galleries we would leave it open. A new kind of urban space – open for new ideas and life. An underwater oasis whose attraction would be its emptiness. As a response to Hamlet’s famous question: to be or not to be? We chose the latter.

The museum is placed around the dry dock and not within. This allows the preservation of the dry dock as an entirely empty space. A series of bridges span the dry dock providing visitors with short-cuts to other portions of the museum. One bridge in particular also serves to navigate visitors to the entrance. An auditorium also serves as a bridge providing access from Kronborg Castle to the harbour. The bridges create a dynamic tension between old and new.

The arrival to the museum is through a descending set of ramps which enter both the dry dock and the world of the sea-fairer. The museum will (like a Siren’s song) attract the passer-by deeper and deeper into the long and noble history of Danish Maritime in its galleries, finally standing in the dry dock with view of the heavens skies.