Gary Shoemaker Architects PC

GEØCENTER MØNS KLINT

Møns Klint, Denmark

Project Details

Square Footage: 27,422 sq ft (8,386 sq m)
GeoCenter - 17,775 sq ft (5,436 sq m)
Hotel - 9,735 sq ft (2,950 sq m)

Design Team: Debra Asztalos, Brock Danner, Kristin Montgomery, Kazuo Yoshida

Exposing Møns Klint to the World / Exposing the World to Møns Klint is a, geological and architectural intervention that reinterprets Denmark’s 130-meter high chalk cliffs not merely as a site, but as an active, "constructed sediment”. By integrating a GeoCenter and hotel into a stratified, tectonic sequence—the brown, green, and blue layers—this project blurs the distinction between earthwork and roof, creating a new undulating surface that exposes the dynamic forces of the landscape. 

  • Constructed Sedimentation: The program functions as a new artificial layer of geological history while revealing the 70-million-year-old seabed’s tectonic forces at the surface.
  • Stratigraphic Sequence: The design organizes the program into three distinct layers - brown, green, and blue - resulting from specific site cuts that register the environmental, tectonic and ecological forces of Møns Klint.
  • Layered Topography: A new responsive surface swells and contracts, erasing the boundary between earthworks and architecture.
  • The Vertical Slab: The hotel acts as a distinctive marker or tectonic protrusion through the tripartite surface, providing a focal / vertical element.
  • Subterranean GeoCenter: The museum is realized as an earthbound assemblage utilizing loose subterranean trajectories to guide visitors through an immersive underground experience.
  • Geological Parking: Parking is integrated into the site's topography organized around major landscape-altering cuts and resting on three contoured plinths.

This project transforms the visitor experience, treating the site as a living, fragile entity where the architecture simultaneously protects and unveils the raw and dramatic forces of the cliffs.