8 stories of bunkers transformed into new architecture

One of the 700 bunkers of the New Dutch Waterline (NDW), a military defence line in use from 1815 to 1940 that protected the cities of Muiden, Utrecht, Vreeswijk and Gorinchem by deliberate flooding, becomes a striking public attraction thanks to a radical design gesture that aims to promote a naturalistically and historically significant area for the country. The small, seemingly inaccessible bunker is ripped in half by a wooden pathway that reveals the interior of the building, which is generally precluded from view, and leads visitors to the paths of the adjacent nature reserve.

An underground bunker is renovated to make the best possible use of the minimal interior space (9 square metres of floor area by two metres in height) and converted into a holiday home. The floor plan is reproduced above ground through a platform that serves as a terrace.

A multi-storey bunker from 1942, which housed up to 25,000 people during the bombing of Hamburg, is being given a new lease of life through a conversion project aimed at preserving the building's memory and enhancing its attractiveness. The addition of several storeys made it possible to create new planted terraced spaces culminating in a public park at the top. The building also houses a hotel, commercial, recreational and training spaces.

In the district of Mitte, a bunker erected in 1942 as an air-raid shelter for the civilian population, later becoming a fruit store during the DDR and finally a Mecca for techno ravers now houses the Boros Collection, a private collection of contemporary art comprising groups of works by international artists from 1990 to the present day, displayed in the over 3,000 square metres of exhibition space.

BIG's intervention expands and transforms a hermetic concrete bunker from World War II into a cultural complex perfectly integrated with the listed landscape of Blåvand in western Denmark. The building, totally hidden in the landscape, consists of a single 2,800 square metre structure with four exhibition spaces excavated in the earth and marked on the surface by a series of cuts in the hillside that lead into the heart of the museum. 

The project extends a Cold War bunker, located in a hilly area overlooking the Baltic Sea, for housing purposes. In addition to the bunker, the complex includes four new low houses set around an inner courtyard in which a tree stands, evoking the idea of a small village square. Rough, natural materials such as exposed concrete and wood in the shells and local gravel in the roofing blend the rigorous volumes into the natural landscape.

The refurbishment of an old anti-aircraft tunnel is part of a redevelopment programme for an area of Florence not popular with tourists. The construction, which creeps 33 metres into the hill under Piazzale Michelangelo, designed in 1943 as a place of defence against World War II bombing by exploiting an older drainage system, has been recovered by Archea Associati as an art gallery devoted to digital research. With a total area of 165 square metres, the heart of Rifugio Digitale is the tunnel with 16 screens hosting temporary exhibitions, events and performances on art, architecture, photography, literature and cinema.

The Bunker, which was used during the Second World War as part of the "Chain Home" radar system to detect enemy aircraft and signal their position, is set in a spectacular landscape context that led the owners to transform the military building into a holiday home. The reuse was intended to preserve as much as possible of the brutalist spirit of the space. From the entrance, underground as in its origins, the interior space opens onto Ringstead Bay with a large window that introjects light. The exposed concrete shells have been meticulously preserved, insulated and waterproofed from the outside to avoid distortion. The high thermal mass produced by the earth covering the building minimises the need for energy to heat the spaces.