Second Place Winner
Living Limestone: A Responsive Museum for Sustainable Futures
Design by
Madison Kim, Elias Hollingworth & Marcus Ström
Juror’s Comment:
An exceptionally forward-thinking and systems-driven proposal that redefines the museum as a regenerative process rather than a static building. The integration of algae-based limestone production with architectural growth over time (page 3) demonstrates remarkable innovation, while the sectional development (page 4) clearly articulates a highly feasible and scalable underground strategy.
Work on:
The experiential and emotional dimension of the museum could be further intensified to match the strength of its ecological narrative.
Madison Kim, Elias Hollingworth & Marcus Ström
The winning team brings together three fifth-year architecture students from diverse backgrounds, united by a shared passion for design and architectural exploration. Elias Hollingworth, 26, and Marcus Ström, 27, are Swedish architecture students at the Lund School of Architecture, while Madison Kim, 24, is an Australian architecture student at The Australian National University. Together, their diverse perspectives, academic experiences, and shared interest in architecture have shaped their approach to the competition and contributed to the success of their winning proposal.
Celebrating Creativity & Vision
Winner’s Spotlight: An Exclusive Interview
Discover the story behind the victory — from concept to creation.
Concept & Interpretation
What was the central idea behind your proposal, and how did you interpret the theme “Subterranean Visions” within your architectural vision for an underground museum?
The central idea behind our Living Limestone project was the exploration of active architecture through a regenerative process. We proposed a museum that does not only occupy a former industrial landscape, but emerges from it, with its own materials being produced on location.
To realize this vision, the project focuses on the Limhamn limestone quarry located in Malmö. The quarry was active from 1860 until 1994 leaving behind a scarred terrain, acidic water, and a drainage system that pumps 70L of water per second. This project reimagines this site's legacy by halting those pumps and allowing the quarry to naturally fill with water over time. Coccolithophore algae is introduced into the rising water. Through photosynthesis, this algae converts carbon dioxide into solid calcium carbonate. This biogenic limestone is then harvested and processed on site in a dedicated production facility and used to progressively construct the museum itself.
Our interpretation of Subterranean Visions is temporal. The museum does not begin underground, it becomes subterranean over time as the quarry fills with water around and above it. In the end, the site is restored to its pre-mined condition.
Reimagining Underground Spaces
Subterranean environments are often perceived as enclosed or restrictive. How did your design transform the underground setting into an engaging, open, and immersive cultural experience for visitors?
The decision was to treat submersion as a gradual event rather than a fixed condition. This project is in continual dialogue with its hydrological context, where the production facility is celebrated rather than hidden. Visitors enter by moving alongside the algae cultivation channels. Ascending through the production facility, they are able to witness limestone being harvested, milled and fired in kilns. The monumental quarry walls of raw mined limestone contrast against the production facility.
The spatial sequence reflects its geological timeline, with circulation moving vertically as well as horizontally. Additional atmospheric features such as observatory decks, material contrasts, and skylights pull natural light deep into the subterranean depth, allowing the sky to always be visible to the visitors and break any sense of restriction. In this way, each space becomes distinct and reflective.
The space never feels enclosed as the museum changes itself in both its shape and program. The biogenic limestone materialised is used to convert the production facility into a museum. This creates a cultural experience that is immersive and transformative over time, where visitors don't just observe an exhibition, but inhabit a living, evolving landscape.
Spatial Experience & Atmosphere
Can you describe how your project approached the emotional and sensory experience of moving through the museum? How did elements such as light, materiality, circulation, and spatial sequencing shape the visitor journey?
The subterranean transformation begins with an encounter with raw industry; the production facility is sited at the base of the limestone quarry. It marks to visitors that this is a place in transition. Gravity tanks, filter presses, mills and kilns operate in full view. Exposed structural beams, the scent of mineral processing, the sound of water intake, and the low hum of kilns all help immersing visitors in the raw mechanisms of the biogenerative museum.
Over time, the materiality softens with biogenic limestone blocks. This material is smoother and softer than the mined limestone. These blocks are used to create thick walls, shifting in acoustic and visual quality. Light enters primarily from above, filtered through submerged glass apertures or water channels, casting rippled patterns within each space.
Each phase of the growing museum offers a new spatial condition to the visitor, ensuring the journey is constantly shifting through every step in the production sequence.
Architecture & Nature Integration
The competition emphasized the relationship between architecture and nature. How did your proposal integrate natural systems, landscape, or environmental elements into the subterranean environment?
Natural systems are not decorative additions. The project depends on the understanding that Limhamn quarry is a ready-made bioreactor.
Flooded limestone pits naturally release free calcium ions into the water, which is a necessity for coccolithophore algae in calcification. The flooded quarry optimises light and depth, setting its location for algae cultivation without excavation. The algae remediates the contaminated quarry water, actively reversing decades of industrial damage. Greywater generated during limestone production is filtered and redistributed through the architectural fabric, ultimately returning to the quarry and closing the hydrological loop.
The museum’s modular limestone columns are placed surrounding the existing steel framework at the rate the material is extracted from production. Therefore, the building’s growth is set by a biological rhythm, rather than a human construction schedule.
Sustainability & Environmental Response
What sustainable strategies were incorporated into your design? How did your project address issues such as energy efficiency, resource optimization, environmental impact, or urban resilience?
The primary material, biogenic limestone, is carbon negative at the point of production. Coccolithophores capture atmospheric carbon dioxide through photosynthesis and fixes it as solid calcium carbonate. This avoids the high temperature kiln processes of conventional cement and lime production. Thermally, the massive biogenic limestone walls act as natural heat sinks, mitigating solar heat gain and stabilizing internal temperatures. Biologically, the ongoing algae cultivation continually remediates the quarry water, while halting the site's original drainage pumps completely eliminates a massive source of ongoing energy expenditure.
Community & Cultural Engagement
Beyond being an exhibition space, the museum was envisioned as a hub for education, interaction, and cultural exchange. How does your proposal encourage public engagement and foster connections between visitors, artists, and the community?
This museum was designed to be a palace of encounter between processes that are rarely seen by the community or placed in conversation. Industrial production, biological science, geological history and cultural exhibition are all co-themes that are emphasised by the projects location. This project hopes to serve as a source of community engagement for architecture and regenerative futures.
Visitors do not arrive at a finished monument. Rather than a limitation, this incompleteness is an invitation; each visit is materially different from the last, with new blocks being placed, new spaces opened, and water levels rising.
The program includes learning spaces, exhibition galleries, and research centers, designed to welcome a diverse demographic including scientists, artists, and educators. The production facility is an open and live exhibit, allowing visitors to trace the journey from algae in cultivation to finished limestone blocks, making the science legible rather than just conceptual.
Innovation & Feasibility
Do you see your proposal as a practical architectural solution for future cities, an experimental concept, or a speculative vision? What opportunities and challenges might arise in realizing such subterranean cultural spaces in real urban contexts?
This project is less a finished answer and more a provocation. Despite this project being speculative, it is grounded in underlying science. Coccolithophore algae, biogenic limestone production, and algae-based carbon sequestration are scientifically validated processes already being tested in architectural research. What is unconventional is the project's timescale, a slow production process, building by biology rather than building schedule.
By operating as a speculative vision, the project aims to unlock new opportunities for urban resilience. Post-industrial brownfields across Europe and the immense pressure to decarbonize the construction sector are real, immediate architectural challenges.
The ultimate opportunity of this subterranean approach lies in transforming industrial scars into productive carbon sinks; the primary challenge is convincing an industry optimized for speed to embrace an architecture that develops at the pace of biology.
Future of Museum Architecture
How do you believe underground architecture can influence the future of museums and cultural institutions? What role can subterranean spaces play in shaping more sustainable and resilient urban environments?
Underground architecture can redefine cultural institutions by shifting the museum from a passive monument into an active, ecological participant. By transforming subterranean vacant spaces into deep-time laboratories, we move away from the "finished building" toward an open-ended process. The public doesn't just look at static exhibits; they return to witness a landscape and architecture in perpetual transition.
In the context of future cities, these vacant spaces offer an extreme strategy for resource optimization and brownfield reclamation. By letting natural hydrology take over, deep quarries become "ready-made bioreactors" that sequester carbon and remediate water without taking up valuable above-ground city footprint. Furthermore, the surrounding earth acts as a massive thermal heat sink, stabilizing temperatures and cutting operational energy costs.
Ultimately, the future of underground design lies in its ability to generate its own structural materiality on-site. Using biological processes like algae-driven calcification to grow biogenic limestone allows the building to expand at a biological rhythm while remaining carbon-negative. This makes the underlying sustainable science completely legible to the community, proving that culture, nature, and architecture can converge to rewrite the narrative of old abandoned industrial remnants in our society.
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