Kaap Skil Museum Entrance Building

Oudeschild is a fishing village of small gabled houses, and Mecanoo answered it with a building that is four gables in a row rather than one large shed. The four pointed roofs are linked in a row so that, seen from the sea, they take up the rhythm of the village and rise above the dyke like waves; the volume never becomes a box. The whole envelope is then wrapped in vertical louvres salvaged from sheet piling taken out of the Noordhollandsch Kanaal — timber already weathered by decades in the canal, reused rather than milled new. In flat light the facade is a striped screen; in low sun it becomes almost transparent, and at night the museum glows between the slats. Behind it are the galleries that hold the museum's wreck finds, including the silk gown from the Palmwood Wreck. The building and its interior have won several awards.