We have developed a museum concept with two types of exhibition environments. A ‘daylight museum’ on the ground floor illustrates a chronological overview of approximately one thousand years of military technology, featuring tanks and aircrafts. The ‘black box’ takes a thematic approach. In the seven theatrical environments that have been created here, stories are central: stories about the importance of water for our defense; stories about the past, present and future of the armed forces; the position of the armed forces in Dutch society; but also many personal stories and dilemmas.
On view
Playing Safe
Soesterberg (NL)
The collections of the Military Aviation Museum in Soesterberg and the Army Museum in Delft were to merge into a new museum located in the former Soesterberg airbase. The Dutch government launched an exciting competition. Five teams competed, each consisting of an architect, an exhibition designer, a landscape architect, and a project developer. The winner was responsible for the integral design of the building, the interior, the exhibition, and the surrounding landscape, and also for the maintenance and exploitation during the first 25 years. We won the pitch as part of the Heijmans PPP consortium with Felix Claus Dick van Wageningen Architects and H+N+S Landscape Architects.

“The scale of the project is enormous. It involves a total exhibition area of 20,000 m², a spectacular roof measuring 110 by 250 meters and 13 meter-high glass exterior walls.”
Niels de Jong
Designer at KDJ



In order to attract not only experts but also families and a wider audience, we added a great deal of dynamism and layers to the exhibitions. Each presentation has its own layer of content aimed at a specific target group. For true connoisseurs there is always extra information available. We developed an interactive Xplore environment especially for children where, for example, they can fly in an F16 or make their own gunpowder.




Dutch Museum Award 2016
Nominated
European Museum of the Year Award 2016
Special Recommendation
DagjeWeg.nl Award 2015
Winner
Design Week Awards 2015
Shortlisted