Today, the Danish West-Jutland region sees the opening of TIRPITZ, an extraordinary museum complex combining Danish and Dutch design. Bjarke Ingles Group (BIG), the architectural firm, embedded the museum in the Danish dune landscape and opened it up to the outside world with vast amounts of light and glass. Tinker imagineers, the Dutch design agency, based the design of the exhibitions on the rhythm of the building and the surrounding nature, and they created a journey through the space and time of West Jutland. The result is a harmonious and accessible museum. And an absolute feast for the senses.

The new Tirpitz Museum boasts four exhibition rooms and is linked underground to a large bunker from World War Two, which was part of the Atlantikwall. Once inside the museum, you tune into the natural rhythm of West Jutland, into the heartbeat of the region. In the central room, the movement is visualised in a pulsating projection, showing the symbols of a seafaring nation, directing the visitors to the exhibitions.

Every room has its own rhythm, beating in sync with its storyline: high and low tide, night and day, good and bad, hot and cold, the passing of time. The Gateway to the West, the room that focuses on local history, is turned into a night-time 4D theatre once an hour. The audio-visual theatre has visitors sit down in a lifeboat before taking them on a tempestuous journey through time. 

In the unruly bunker landscape of An Army of Concrete, visitors get to discover the story of how the Atlantikwall came about in West Jutland. Once they enter the concrete bunkers, however, they step into the personal spaces of the Danes and Germans who worked and lived around the Atlantikwall. Such as the room of Anna, the girl who had a child with a German soldier.

A little further down, you walk into the enchanting steel forest of The Gold of the West Coast. Along with its changing colours and sounds, the atmosphere of the rooms alternates between warm and cold: references to the history of amber. In the abstract, fairy-tale trees, the visitors will discover amber enclosures that are millions of years old, artefacts, and many stories. They speak of the attraction of amber, and how the amber fever may seize you unless you are careful.

The Tirpitz Museum opens to the public on 30 June.