Praksis Arkitekter has won the competition to design a new visitor center for the Stevns Klint UNESCO World Heritage site in Denmark. Four architecture firms were invited to participate, and Praksis was chosen as the winner working with Kristine Jensen Landscape and Henry Jensen engineers. The project was designed to fit into the landscape as visitors move from the geology of Stevns Klint to the sea.
"We wanted a world-class visitor center, and the project we have chosen lives up to those expectations," says the chairman of the Stevns Klint Visitor Center, Per Røner. He adds, "The location of the visitor center in the limestone quarry creates a natural access to the sea and the landscape. And with the frame above the fracture as a backdrop to the visitor center, we give visitors a unique journey down through the layers of the cliff. It is an original thought, and I look forward to seeing it built." Outside the visitor center, there will be a path that runs between the 'UNESCO wall' with all the layers of the cliff as well as the coastline where the cliff fades away. The center will appears with a clear reference to the materiality of the quarry, with limestone being used as the facade material.
Stevns Klint was named UNESCO World Heritage in 2014 because it is the best place in the world to see the traces of the asteroid, which for 66 million years ago, where more than 50% of all life on Earth was extinct, including the dinosaurs. Boesdal Lime quarry has been an active lime quarry until 1978. The lime quarry still contains the Pyramid, which was used for storing crushed lime, a smaller dry barrel and the remains of two shaft kilns. In November 2015, Stevns Municipality received an exemption to build a visitor center within the beach protection line. Nine other projects around Denmark received the same exemption, but the World Heritage Visitor Center is among the first to be realized.
Construction is expected to commence in the spring of 2020, and the visitor center will open in late 2021.
