A doughnut-shaped timber "ark" filled with animal sculptures sits at the centre of the recently opened ANOHA children's museum at the Jewish Museum in Berlin.
Architecture studio Olson Kundig designed the museum, which is an addition to the Daniel Libeskind-designed Jewish Museum Berlin, to be a space for "discovery, exploration and play".
Top: the structure had a doughnut shape. Above: clerestory windows were placed at the top of the structure
Set opposite the existing museum's building, ANOHA was built within a brutalist former flower market. The architect's concept aims to use the story of Noah's ark as an accessible way of understanding issues of climate change.
Originally called Arche Noah ? Noah's ark in German ? the name was changed to ANOHA to be easier for visitors of all ages to pronounce. Timber lines the exterior of the play space
The 1960s concrete market hall was left largely untouched, with a contrasting timber structure inserted within the concrete frame.
"The 585-square-meter ark is inspired by two seemingly disparate sources: an ancient Sumerian text that describes a circular ark, and Space Station V, a ship from Stanley Kubrik's film 2001: A Space Odyssey," said the studio.
"The warm, curvilinear ark offers a softening counterpoint to the rectilinear brutalist structure of the existing hall, while the structural ribs within the ark echo the concrete ribbing that frames the skylights overhead."
Play areas over ...