New Museum Building

Rendering of the new museum. Photo: The Danish Road Directorate and Lundgaard & Tranberg Architects.

With generous donations from the Villum Foundation, the Novo Nordisk Foundation, the Obel Family Foundation and Aage and the Johanne Louis-Hansen Foundation, the University of Copenhagen can begin construction of the new Natural History Museum of Denmark.

Architects Lundgaard & Tranberg and architect Claus Pryds have designed the museum, which is to be located in the Botanical Garden in the heart of Copenhagen. The building will bring together the Zoological Museum, the Geological Museum and the Botanical Museum into a museum of international excellence. At the same time, the Botanical Garden will become a central element in the future museum experience.

When the new museum is completed, it will contain a natural history collection of more than 14 million objects. The collections of skeletons, skins, preserved animals, insects on needle, plants on herbarium sheets, fossils and minerals all document the diversity and evolution of life and form the basis for the museum's research, education and outreach.

The new museum will strengthen the possibility of being at the forefront of scientific research, as well as strengthening the important food chain for science education.

The total budget framework for the project is approximately DKK 1.2 billion.
The new museum is expected to be completed and open to the public in a couple of years.