KAAP SKIL Maritime & Beachcombers Museum, Texel

21, Barentszstraat, Oudeschild, Netherlands

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CW 50: curtain walls

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KAAP SKIL Maritime & Beachcombers Museum, Texel

21, Barentszstraat, Oudeschild, Netherlands

Firm

Kossmann.dejong

YEAR

2012

SIZE

100,000 sqft - 300,000 sqft

KAAP SKIL
Very few people know about Texel’s infamous VOC history. The fleet of
the Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie’s [United East Indian Company]
used to start its journeys to the East from its moorings at the ‘Reede
van Texel’ [Texel Roads] in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. At
the time Texel was the equivalent to the Netherlands’ Schiphol airport.
This special history is being told in KAAP SKIL, museum of beachcombers
and sailors, which will open its doors in a new building on 30 March.
The building, designed by Mecanoo Architects, houses two new
exhibitions, a museum café and a shop, all designed by Kossmann.dejong.De Reede van Texel [Texel Roads]
In the new exhibitions the audience is taken to Oudeschild in the Golden
Age. The museum’s showpiece is a model of the Reede van Texel of 18 x 4
metres. The model shows in detail the impressive spectacle of hundreds
of ships along Texel’s coast. Special viewers allow visitors to zoom in
on these scenes, and show exciting animations. Animated scenes from
seventeenth-century paintings, projected onto a twenty-metre-long wall
behind the model, show a glimpse of what the rhythm of day and night was
like during life at sea. Nine rooms of discovery take the visitor
further along into the Dock’s world. In each of these rooms history is
brought to life through a spatial installation or a piece from the
collection and by means of a seventeenth-century figure.Under water archaeology
The first floor houses a research laboratory where visitors can admire
objects that had been lost, derived from shipwrecks found along Texel’s
shores. Innumerable seventeenth- and eighteenth-century objects are
displayed thematically, but there is also a showcase that shows all the
objects found in one shipwreck. The found objects raise questions about
the history of seafaring. By linking the objects to different
perspectives, they are put in certain contexts through which they offer
us a new point of view on history. The exhibition also offers space for
objects found by amateur divers.Interior museum
The ground floor houses a museum café and a shop. Alongside having a
function for the museum, this space is also a meeting place for Texel’s
residents. Because the floor is covered in paving, the space’s open
character is emphasised. Thus the street, the museum shop and café and
the terrace are interconnected. The layout of the shop reflects that of a
contemporary fish auction. Characteristic white and blue fish crates
have been integrated in both the counter and the museum shop. The
maritime flavour also stretches to the museum café, in which the chairs
are covered in used sailcloth, while lifebuoys carry signage. Suspended
from the ceiling is a large map of Texel, made out of Texel wool. The
map, composed of felt and knitted pieces, has been put together by
artist Erna van Sambeek in collaboration with various Texel-based women.