The Whale is conceived as a single, flowing landscape where visitors move from rock shore to ocean depths and back to the surface.

TMS develops multi-sensory narrative layers that sit lightly on the architecture. Instead of dominating the building. Projections, sound fields, and interactive elements are treated like tides: they rise, recede, and leave room for silence, darkness, and the physical presence of whale skeletons and specimens.

Visitors arrive on the rocky landscape and feel the building as an extension of the shore rather than a separate museum. Horizon, wind, and distant soundscapes set the tone: humans are guests in a whale environment, not the other way around.

The Whale takes on a national task: to extend Norway’s long history of managing marine ecosystems into a new cultural era.

The exhibition must convey cutting-edge whale science without turning whales into abstract data and address the ethical shift from hunting to protection while acknowledging whales’ role in Norwegian coastal culture.

Visitors like families, schools, locals, and international tourists will experience The Whale in one shared storyline.

The core challenge is to let visitors feel close to whales and turning respect, scale, and interdependence into the main experience.