Anchorage Museum Expansion

The British design team won an international competition in 2003 to expand a museum of history and art. The extension houses around a thousand objects from a national collection of Arctic studies, a science discovery centre for children and a reorganised display of the museum’s own art and history collections, with an integrated approach to the cultures of the circumpolar north.

The site combines the existing museum, a new extension and a landscaped urban park. The new building is organised as five linear volumes of different lengths and heights along the west side of the existing building, forming a new façade and entrance facing the city centre.

The volumes are wrapped in reflective glass that mirrors the sky, the mountains and the changing northern light, while windows open views into the activity of the museum.