The new Hungarian Natural History Museum, designed by Bjarke Ingels Group, is a 247,000-square-foot, sustainable and timber-structured museum in Debrecen, Hungary, integrating architecture with Debrecen’s Great Forest landscape.

The redesigned Hungarian Natural History Museum is designed as a living, evolving space, offering interactive learning zones, ecological pathways and rooftop gardens that function as living laboratories for environmental research and biodiversity education.

© Bjarke Ingels Group

The museum is being constructed in Debrecen, Hungary’s second-largest city, on a former sports ground at the northern edge of the historic Great Forest (Nagyerdő). It will replace the existing museum in Budapest and establish Debrecen as a regional hub for education, culture and scientific research by 2030, supporting both public engagement and academic study

The mission of the Hungarian Museum of Natural History is to spark curiosity about nature’s diversity and inspire a commitment to protecting our natural environment. In 2019, the Government of Hungary decided to build the new headquarters of Hungarian Museum of Natural History in Debrecen, where it can fulfill its mission in a state-of-the-art, 21st-century environment, enhancing its impact and reinforcing the role of Debrecen as the intellectual and cultural hub of the region.

© Bjarke Ingels Group

Selected through an international competition, the new museum will be located within Debrecen’s historic Great Forest, where three overlapping landscaped ribbons rise from the forest floor to form a new destination for exhibitions, education and research. Conceived as a manmade hill in a forest clearing, the building integrates exhibition halls, learning spaces and public amenities within a mass timber structure partially embedded in the landscape and clad in locally sourced timber.

The roof, covered with native plant species, extends the forest canopy naturally, encouraging the return of flora and fauna to an area once an integral part of the city’s forest. The building itself emerges from the ground; its façade, clad in charred wood panels, continues the landscape and softens the transition between built space and wilderness.

© Bjarke Ingels Group

The modern museum will be more than an institution; it will be a meeting point where people and scientific disciplines intertwine to create inspiration and new perspectives. A library and restaurant will offer views into the forest canopy, while a subterranean learning hub hosts workshops, play areas and research labs for students and families.

Vegetation is also integrated into interior spaces, creating a continuous connection between indoor and outdoor environments. Visitors approach the museum via winding forest paths and open plazas, with a southern-facing plaza serving as a community hub for events and museum programming.

© Bjarke Ingels Group

Within a few years the museum is expected to become a landmark for both architecture and natural history in Hungary.