Located on a former sports ground at the edge of Debrecen’s Great Forest, Nagyerdő, the new Hungarian Natural History Museum is defined by three overlapping volumes that rise and fall with the landscape. The museum will replace the existing institution in Budapest, supporting the government’s vision to establish Debrecen as a key regional hub by 2030. Commissioned by the museum and the Ministry of Culture and Innovation, the building will house permanent and temporary exhibition halls, educational and research facilities, public amenities and back-of-house spaces, creating a new cultural and scientific destination in Hungary’s eastern region.
Approaching from any direction, visitors are met with open plazas, winding forest paths and framed views through and over the building. The museum is accessible from all sides, integrating it into both the urban fabric and the surrounding natural landscape. The arrival is marked by a generous southern plaza that forms a meeting point for community life and museum activities. Inside, the reception hall acts as a central compass point, offering glimpses into the surrounding exhibition wings – five for permanent galleries and one for temporary shows and public programs. Above, a library and restaurant offer views into the forest canopy, while below, a learning hub hosts workshops, play spaces and research labs for students, families and staff.
The museum’s program is organized into three functional zones: exhibition spaces, public areas, and back-of-house operations. These zones are arranged in parallel 28-meter-wide bars, ensuring a clear spatial rhythm that balances public accessibility with behind-the-scenes functionality. Rooted in the idea of a flexible and independent exhibition space, the museum unfolds in a star-shaped plan that responds in all directions to its forest setting. This radial layout blends inside and out, supporting a 360-degree experience of nature and culture.
Blurring the line between building and landscape, the museum takes on a low, undulating form that nestles into the terrain. Partially embedded in the ground, the structure’s ribbons offer a controlled climate for exhibitions while merging with the surrounding forest. Where human intervention once cleared the land, the museum now restores it. Green pockets and planted roofs return the site to the forest, fostering biodiversity and creating new habitats for native flora and fauna.
The museum’s geometry extends like pathways into the woods, inviting movement from all directions. At its highest point, a lookout offers panoramic views across Nagyerdő, transforming the museum into both a destination and a point of orientation within the forest. The museum’s façade adapts to its dual context – balancing the controlled interior conditions needed for artefacts with a visual and physical openness to the forest. Transparency, shading, and materiality shift across the structure to mediate between nature and the exhibition environment.
“Natural history is a subject dear to me – so dear that I named my oldest son Darwin. To that end, it is a great honor to have been entrusted with the authorship of The Hungarian Natural History Museum in the great forest of Debrecen. Our design is conceived as an intersection of paths and lineages. Intersecting ribbons of landscape overlap to produce a series of niches and habitats, halls and galleries, blending the inside and the outside, the intimate and the mastodontic in seamless continuity. The result is a manmade hill in a forest clearing; geometrically clear yet softly organic – an appropriate home for the wonders of the natural world,” said Bjarke Ingels, Creative Director & Founder, BIG.
