Situated near Jægersborg Deer Park, north of Copenhagen, Ordrupgaard houses Northern Europe’s most comprehensive collection of French and Danish art from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Originally built as a three-winged country mansion in the neo-classical style during World War I, the museum was expanded in 2005 with a modern glass and black lava concrete volume designed by Zaha Hadid. This time, most of the building is buried or partly excavated from the landscape, creating a circular path that links Hadid’s extension with the original building and the park and gardens. In total, the new design comprises landscape interventions as well as five new subterranean exhibition spaces. Two of these wings create a continuation of Hadid’s exhibition space, and three house part of the museum’s permanent collection of French impressionist paintings. Only the largest of the three main exhibition spaces can be partly seen from the outside as a monolithic, steel-coated sculpturesque structure that seems somewhat excavated from a larger volume below ground. Cut in a wide range of facets and polished in different directions, the structure creates a play of light throughout the days and shifting seasons...[+]