Three hundred kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, at the tip of a Norwegian island where the road simply stops at the Atlantic, a concrete shell is being lowered onto the rocks. It is called The Whale, and it opens on 3 June 2027.

The building is a knowledge and experience centre about whales, designed by the Danish architect Dorte Mandrup, with the exhibition led by Ralph Appelbaum Associates and Tamschick Media + Space. The grand opening is 3 June 2027. Doors open to the general public the following day, 4 June.

Why Andenes

Andenes is a fishing village on Andoya, the northernmost island in the Vesteralen archipelago. It is small, it is remote, and it happens to sit beside one of the most reliable whale encounters on the planet. A deep submarine canyon, Bleiksdjupet, runs in toward the island from the northwest and drops steeply just offshore, which means deep water arrives at the coastline rather than a hundred miles out. The canyon pushes cold, nutrient-rich water to the surface and supports sperm whales, fin whales, humpbacks, minke, killer and pilot whales through the year rather than seasonally. Andenes has built a whale watching industry on that fact, and two of the operators, Hvalsafari AS and Whale2Sea AS, are among the owners of the new centre.

That is the argument for building here rather than in Oslo or Bergen. The exhibition is not a substitute for seeing a whale. It is meant to be the other half of the day.

A roof you walk on

Mandrup's practice has spent a decade working in landscapes that punish buildings: the Wadden Sea, the Ilulissat ice fjord in Greenland. The approach here is consistent with that record. Rather than placing an object on the shoreline, the studio lifted a piece of the ground.

The structure is a single curved concrete shell in a parabolic form. It transfers its load to three support points at the corners of the building, which leaves the interior almost entirely free of columns. The shape is not decorative. A low, aerodynamic curve sheds Arctic wind and stops snow from settling, and the shell does the structural work with a minimum of material.

The roof surface is covered in natural, unworked stone gathered locally, laid in an irregular pattern so that from a distance the building reads as an extension of the rock it sits on. Visitors can walk across it. The roof functions as a public viewpoint over the archipelago whether or not you buy a ticket, which is a quietly generous decision for a project of this size.

Inside, large windows face the sea. The finished building runs to roughly 3,750 square metres, of which about 1,800 are exhibition space. The design team includes Marianne Levinsen Landskab on landscape, Norconsult on engineering, and AT Plan & Arkitektur locally. The surrounding site is being treated as part of the visit, with paths, platforms, viewpoints, a tidepool and stepping stones between the building and the water.

Nine rooms, in order

The exhibition is structured as a sequence rather than a set of displays you wander between. Ralph Appelbaum Associates, the firm behind the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and a long list of natural history institutions, won the commission through an international competition of its own, held after Mandrup's studio took the 2019 architecture competition. Tamschick Media + Space handles the immersive and media work.

The journey runs through nine sections:

Shaped by Land and Sea. The building explains itself, opening views toward ocean, mountains and horizon.
Home of the Whales. Why this particular stretch of coast, and why the animals are here all year.
The First Encounter. A close meeting, guided by a family of killer whales. Recognition before information.
Adapted to the Ocean. The evolutionary path that took a land mammal back under the surface.
Under the Skin. Anatomy at close range and at real scale.
Below the Surface. Deeper water, where light fades and sound takes over as the primary sense.
Soundscape. A multisensory room built around whale vocalisation.
Library of Relations. The long human relationship with whales, hunting included, and where it goes next.
Horizons. The closing argument: whales do not recognise borders, and the oceans are one connected system.

It is worth noting what the sequence does not do. It does not begin with taxonomy. The emotional encounter comes early, the biology after it, and the conservation argument arrives at the end, once you have spent ninety minutes with the animal. That is a deliberate inversion of the standard natural history museum order, and it is the clearest sign that this project is aiming at something other than a regional visitor centre.

Shaped by Land and Sea

The First Encounter

Adapted to the Ocean

Under the Skin

Below the Surface

Soundscape

Library of Relations

Horizons

Who is building it

The project started as an idea in Andenes in 2014 and was formally established in 2016. The Whale AS, the company that owns and develops it, followed in May 2018. Andoy Municipality is the majority shareholder, joined by six others: AH Holding AS, Norlandia Holding AS, Eidissen Consult AS, Hvalsafari AS, Whale2Sea AS and Andoy Reiseliv SA. Operations run through a non-profit subsidiary, The Whale Drift AS. Funding has come from a mix of public and private contributions, with the final piece of public financing secured in November 2024. That is the decision that turned a decade of drawings into a construction site.

The ownership structure is the interesting part. This is a municipality of a few thousand people commissioning a Danish architect and a New York exhibition firm, with the local whale watching operators sitting on the cap table. The incentives are aligned in a way they usually are not. The people who profit from visitors staying an extra night are the same people paying for the building that gives them a reason to.

Planning a visit

The centre will operate year round, with hours that shift by season. Allow ninety minutes to two hours. The building is fully accessible for wheelchairs and prams. Tickets are timed entry, with slots during peak season, and the site recommends booking ahead; ticket and package sales are scheduled to open in autumn 2026.

Getting there takes effort, which is part of the point. Andoya Airport sits six kilometres south of Andenes, with Wideroe connections through Bodo and Tromso. Bus, ferry and car all work too. The obvious itinerary pairs the exhibition with a whale watching departure from the harbour, and the two are close enough to do in a single day.

The wider bet

Northern Norway has watched a lot of visitors pass through on the way to the Lofoten postcard. The Whale is an attempt to give people a reason to stop on Andoya specifically, in winter as well as summer, and to convert a weather-dependent boat trip into a fixed, year round proposition. Iceland made a similar bet with its lagoons and its volcano tours. Norway is making it with a building.

Whether it works will come down to something outside anyone's control, which is whether a visitor who has just stood inside a room built to feel like a whale's chest goes back out to the harbour and books the boat. On 3 June 2027, they will start finding out.

MIR's visualisations

The pictures that carried The Whale through its first years came from MIR, the Bergen studio credited on the image at the top of this piece. Four of them are below. The three interiors are worth reading as a separate proposition rather than a preview: they visualise an exhibition concept that is not the Ralph Appelbaum design now being installed.

The Whale opens 3 June 2027 in Andenes, Andoya, Northern Norway, with general admission from 4 June. Architecture by Dorte Mandrup A/S. Exhibition by Ralph Appelbaum Associates with Tamschick Media + Space. Images are architectural renderings; the building is still under construction.