BIG unveils design for ‘ribbon-like’ Hungarian Natural History Museum

Bjarke Ingels Group has been selected to design the new Hungarian Natural History Museum, set within the historic Great Forest of Debrecen. The 247,000-square-foot facility will replace the museum’s current home in Budapest, supporting a national strategy to position Debrecen as a cultural and educational hub by 2030.

The project, commissioned by the Ministry of Culture and Innovation in partnership with the museum, is being developed in collaboration with Vikár és Lukács Építés Stúdió, Museum Studio, and engineering firm TYPSA. The museum will be located on the site of a former sports ground at the edge of Nagyerdő, a centuries-old urban forest in Hungary’s second-largest city.

The architectural concept comprises three overlapping, ribbon-like volumes that are designed to rise organically from the landscape. Featuring a mass timber structure and a charred timber façade, the building is partially embedded into the terrain, aiming to minimize its visual impact and ecological footprint. Sloping green roofs planted with native vegetation are designed to extend the surrounding forest canopy, creating new habitats for local species.

Visitors will enter through open plazas and winding forest paths, with access points on all sides of the building. A large southern plaza will serve as a civic gathering space. Inside, the museum is organized around a central reception hall leading to six gallery wings: five dedicated to permanent exhibitions and one for temporary displays and public programs. Additional features include a library and restaurant overlooking the forest, and an underground learning hub for workshops, research, and educational activities.

“Natural history is a subject dear to me – so dear that I named my oldest son Darwin,” Bjarke Ingels said about the scheme. “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,” Ingels added. “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.”