ZHA Designs Nikola Tesla Museum –

Nikola Tesla was born in 1856 in Smiljan, present-day Croatia, to a Serbian family and died in 1943 in New York City. While Smiljan is home to the Nikola Tesla Memorial Center, the current home of the Nikola Tesla Museum, which celebrates the famous engineer, futurist and inventor who hardly needs an introduction, is located on Krunska Street in Belgrade, in a nearly 100-year history old villa that was converted into a museum a decade after his death. Although the museum contains Tesla's remains and thousands of historical documents, according to Wikipedia, “very little can be seen in the small exhibition room on the ground floor,” indicating the need for new facilities.

The new, larger museum building is financed by Belgrade Waterfront, which held an open international competition with the Belgrade Urban Planning Institute last year. The competition program envisages the new Tesla Museum as one of four museums comprising a planned new museum district in Belgrade, stretching from Savski Square to Resavska Street and the Mostar junction and consisting of the History Museum, the Children's Museum, the Nikola Tesla Museum and the Belgrade City Museum.

The award-winning design by London-based ZHA under project leader Manuela Gatto and Belgrade-based Bureau Cube Partners preserves much of the heritage-listed Milan Vapa paper mill, built in 1924 and abandoned about a decade ago, including its historic chimney. Parts of the facades, roofs and interior walls are opened and cut away and replaced with curved surfaces that nod to ZHA's oeuvre, but here materials have been used that fit the existing building and the former industrial context. A new circular opening in the factory's west facade will serve as the main entrance, leading visitors to the triple-height atrium anchored by the chimney, as seen in the rendering above. To underscore Tesla's leadership in electrifying the world, the immersive Tesla Electronic Transformer Gallery, seen in the rendering below, will feature a 12 million-volt transformer. No expected completion or opening of the museum has been announced.