Scan Magazine | Special Theme | Nordic Architecture & Design – Denmark
Qal’at al-Bahrain Museum. Photo: Loredana Mantello
Re-presenting the past From Viking-age long halls to modern museums, WOHLERT Architects has a long and colourful history with, well, history. Founded by Vilhelm Wohlert, architect of the world-famous Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, WOHLERT has been carving out an interesting niche for itself since 1945, bringing old buildings back to their former glory and constructing new ones to curate cultural heritage for modern audiences. By Louise Older Steffensen | Photos: WOHLERT Arkitekter
Today, WOHLERT Architects is run by Wohlert’s protégés, Line Loftheim and Torben Schmidt, who, with their collective 45 years at WOHLERT, are fit to carry on its legacy: creating buildings that will last. ”I think what WOHLERT does is create seamless transitions between our world and the past,” Loftheim explains. ”One of the best examples of this is the mid-18thcentury Dehn’s Mansion in Copenhagen.” Tragically, a fire and subsequent water damage obliterated the house in 2010. It took WOHLERT six years to restore the 54 | Issue 117 | October 2018
building to its former glory, but they took advantage of the tragedy, turning the unused loft into a bright, functional space that beautifully reflects the mansion’s rococo and empire style but is unapologetically modern, ensuring the relevance of the building in the future. One of their modern buildings, the immersive Museum of Jelling, so impressed a visiting Bahrainian princess, that she asked WOHLERT to design her homeland’s Qal’at al-Bahrain Museum, to dis-
play Manama’s UNESCO-protected archaeological site. ”I think both our old and new structures share a reverence for their context,” Schmidt suggests. ”We have to understand the time, space and culture Dehns Mansion, staircase.