Sheet index — Aske Tarn Architects

studio@asketarn.example

A concept by Warped Web Studio

AT-021 — Cultural

The Salt Archive

Corner of a board-marked concrete volume rising against an overcast sky, narrow window slots set flush in the wall.
Length of the long wall: 72.40 metres

Length of the long wall

Location
Limfjord, North Jutland, Denmark
Grid ref.
56°58′N 8°42′E
Programme
Maritime archive and public reading rooms
Year
2019–2024
Status
Completed
Area
4,860 m²
Levels
3 above ground, 2 below
Structure
In-situ concrete, post-tensioned roof beams

The site is a strip of reclaimed land barely a metre above the fjord. The brief asked for a building that could keep paper, rope and timber stable for centuries. We answered with weight: a long concrete wall that holds the public rooms above the ground line and the collection below it, where the earth keeps the temperature almost constant through the year.

S-01

Mass instead of machinery

Archives are usually sealed boxes kept stable by plant rooms. Here, walls 900 millimetres thick and two storeys of earth do most of that work. The vaults sit below the water table inside a watertight concrete tank, so the collection lives in the ground's own slow climate.

Mechanical systems remain, but as a correction rather than a life-support machine. The building is designed to fail gently: if the power goes, the rooms drift by a degree over a week, not an afternoon.

A curved concrete ramp sweeping around a dim, double-height interior.
A curved concrete ramp sweeping around a dim, double-height interior.

Model — section plane study

Cut through the archive

Cutting plane

  1. +10.40Roof
  2. +5.20Reading room
  3. ±0.00Entrance hall
  4. −4.20Upper vault
  5. −7.60Lower vault

Scroll, or use the slider, to lower the cutting plane from the roof to the lower vault.

Drawings

Plan and section

Ground-floor plan, cut at +1.00Hover or focus a room

Ground-floor rooms and areas
No.RoomArea
G.01Entrance hall377 m²
G.02Exhibition gallery340 m²
G.03Conservation studio146 m²
G.04Lockers and cloaks97 m²
G.05Ramp to the collection68 m²
G.06Loading and quarantine86 m²

Long section A–A1:500

S-02

Descending into the collection

A single ramp turns down through the building, from the entrance at the ground line to the reading room and then to the vault doors. The public route and the archive's route are the same; visitors pass the conservation studio through a long internal window on the way down.

The section is the whole idea. Above ground, the building is open to the fjord and the weather. Below it, the rooms become quieter, darker and heavier, until the only light is the light you carry in.

Concrete stairs rising in parallel through a dark shaft, lit from above.
Concrete stairs rising in parallel through a dark shaft, lit from above.
Deep concrete fins casting diagonal shadows across a pale wall.
Deep concrete fins casting diagonal shadows across a pale wall.

S-03

Light by the measure

The reading room is lit entirely from above, through cast-glass rooflights set in the depth of the roof beams. The beams are deep enough that direct sun never reaches the tables; what arrives is north sky, reflected twice off lime plaster.

In winter, when the fjord light is low and grey, the rooflights hold the brightness of the whole sky. In summer they shade themselves.

A narrow top-lit passage between white walls, a bridge crossing over dark water.
A narrow top-lit passage between white walls, a bridge crossing over dark water.
A curved concrete soffit meeting a wall of evenly spaced tie holes.
A curved concrete soffit meeting a wall of evenly spaced tie holes.

Schedule

Materials

  • M-01

    Board-marked concrete

    Douglas fir shuttering, 120 mm boards, pigmented with ground chalk from the site

  • M-02

    Lime plaster

    Three-coat hydraulic lime, hand-trowelled, left unpainted

  • M-03

    Cast glass

    Channel-section rooflights, 40 mm, set in the depth of the roof beams

  • M-04

    Oak

    End-grain blocks to the reading room floor, oiled; reading tables in quarter-sawn oak