The museum of modern Friesian art bridges the Wijde Wijk, the Grand Canal in the restored classical landscape gardens of the 17th century in outlying Oranjewoud.
The building’s simple rectangular shape is in line with the utilitarian and rational character of the landscape. Despite it being a largely enclosed mass, an emphatic link has been laid between the museum and the surrounding landscape. In the exhibition rooms, this has been achieved in subtle form by means of a glass plinth that serves the function of the museum as a place to display paintings. The relationship with the landscape is explicitly defined in the museum café: where the museum crosses the Grand Canal, the façade has been raised like a curtain. Vistas are generated out of the museum café to the mansion at the far end of the water’s axis - embedded in monumental groups of trees - and the flat Friesian countryside with its capricious airs. The view unites the building with its content: the majority of the collection was inspired by the Friesian landscape.
Architecture
Despite the contrast between the Museum Belvédère and the landscape, in its design and the materials used it was visibly inspired by that landscape. Inside a clear spatial concept - both in its setting in the landscape and its inherent setup - the art gets all the space it needs; the building stands to serve. The museum’s façade translates this restraint in largely closed expanses of German basalt as an abstract rendering of the peat digging landscape. The low-set strip of light lifts the ‘heavy’ building into the very landscape that lends it its contemporary look.