The brief called for an extensive programme whose setting was a city centre with a high development density. The issue then is how to design a building that is held clear of this urban context with a unity that can only relate to itself.

The museum sounds out various local themes - the grid of the Plantage in Amsterdam, the zoo (Artis) and the botanical gardens (Hortus Botanicus).

Contained within its walls are a number of different worlds predicated on analogies with nature as it is today. The analogies served as a design tool to impose internal consistency. This was done by establishing combinations and drawing on the themes and programme of the museum. Thus, the visitor climbs a mountain pass, wanders across flat expanses and descends into an azure-blue crevasse to finally leave the building via a twilit underground world.

Place of education: TU Delft
Tutors: Bernard Leupen, Peter Lüthi & Arie Krijgsman
Specialization: architecture