‘Flugt’ is the new refugee museum that Denmark opened last June in the former refugee camp in Oksbøl, West Jutland. The museum tells the story of the dramatic escapes from the war, starting with the exodus of 250.000 German civilians who, at the end of the Second World War, under the attacks of the Red Army abandoned their homes in Germany to find refuge in occupied Denmark: the Oksbøl camp housed 35.000 of them. The Flugt Museum is housed in the camp’s former hospital, renovated and extended by the BIG architectural studio, preserving the existing buildings and transforming them into museum spaces combined with a new structure clad in corten steel, whose colour creates a visual uniformity with the old bricks. Architect Bjarke Ingels, founder of BIG, explains the choice: “We have created an environment that unites past and present, where the new structures are shaped directly by their connection to the historic buildings.” A work of architectural regeneration that combines tradition and modernity, but which is also charged with a strong symbolic value. The museum’s director, Claus Kjeld Jensen, explains: “The aim of Flugt is to tell the story of the human being on the run, yesterday as well as today. In the museum, in fact, the gaze widens […] to a broader and universal drama: that of millions of people who […] have been forced to leave their homeland to find acceptance (and a future) in a foreign country.” In the nine exhibition rooms, visitors are drawn into the stories of refugees from the past, but also from today: people who came to Denmark from Vietnam, Hungary, Afghanistan, Syria. Flugt uses personal stories to teach us something about the tragedy of wars, therefore it could teach something to the Danish Government’s members that backed the shameful ‘outsourcing of migrants‘ initiative.
Read more on Flugtmuseum.dk