Architecture

Carl-Henning Pedersen & Else Alfelts Museum was inaugurated in 1976 and originally consisted of a single circular building for exhibitions. In 1993, the museum was extended with a three-sided prism, and in 2015 an underground corridor was constructed, connecting the former shirt factory Angligården to the other museum buildings.

The circular museum building was designed by C. F. Møller Architects based on an idea by landscape architect C. Th. Sørensen. With its basic geometrical shape, the building coexists harmoniously with the pre-existing structures in Birk, which in 1976, when the museum was established, included the circular sculpture park and the likewise circular Angli factory.

 

 

In 1992-93, an extension was added to the museum, rising like a magnificent mountain peak next to the original circular building. The extension is shaped like a three-sided prism, one side of which is made of glass while the other two sides are covered with blue ceramic tiles painted by Carl-Henning Pedersen. The exhibition space is situated underground and consists of a square gallery, connected to the original building by an underground corridor.

The main feature of the museum is the 90-metre-long ceramic frieze by Carl-Henning Pedersen covering the exterior wall of the circular building. This monumental ornamentaion is made up of more than 1,000 painted ceramic tiles and coheres beautifully with the ceramic decoration of the Angli Courtyard, The Play of Imagination around the Wheel of Life, made by Carl-Henning Pedersen in 1966-1968. A third ornamentation in Birk, this time in enamel, was created by the artist in 1990 for the Danish Export School's new building. In 2003, the last of Carl-Henning Pedersen's monumental projects in the Birk area could be seen when his ceramic tile-covered obelisk was unveiled in the roundabout neighbouring the museum.

The architectural design of Carl-Henning Pedersen & Else Alfelts Museum symbolises the two very different artists. The circular main building and its painted ceramic frieze evoke Carl-Henning Pedersen's fantastic fairy tale world while the prism is a monument to Else Alfelt's love of soaring thoughts and stringent shapes.