11 / 16CulturalGenk, Belgium
A low museum at the foot of the last headframe, with a ramp that takes visitors down to the old mine level. · In progress
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Facts
Genk's last headframe stands over a shaft that closed with the mines. Stad Genk asked us for a museum of the coalfield at its foot: galleries, an archive of the mining families, a hall for school groups, and a way for visitors to reach the level where the work was done. The building is 5 600 m² on a site of 15 800 m², between the headframe and the spoil heaps. Design began in 2021.
The headframe is kept as found. We have not painted it, lit it or put a lift in it. The museum stays low at its foot, so the steel tower remains the only vertical thing on the site and the first thing seen from the heaps. The north elevation (E-401) shows how far below the winding wheels the museum roof stops.
The main route through the museum is a ramp that drops 9 m from the square to the original mine-gallery level. It descends steadily, with no steps, so that everyone, on foot or in a wheelchair, makes the same journey down. The galleries open off the ramp as it falls, and the story of the coalfield is told in the order of the descent. Section A–A (S-301) follows the ramp from the square to the bottom.
At the bottom, a length of the original gallery wall is exposed behind glass. It is the only part of the mine that visitors will see, and it is shown as it is.
The concrete is made with coal-slag aggregate from the spoil heap next door, so the walls are dark grey and catch the light where they have been ground. The roof is built from recovered steel sections, salvaged from colliery buildings that had already come down, tested by Lumen & Kast Engineers and reused at spans close to their original ones. Arkiv Heritage advised on what could be taken and what had to stay.
The ramp is only 9 m deep. We made it long enough that people stop talking before they reach the bottom.
The final section of the ramp was poured in April 2026, and the former miners on the museum's advisory group walked down it with us. One of them found his own chalk mark on the gallery wall. The structure is now complete and the galleries are being fitted out with objects lent by the families: lamps, tallies, tokens and the work clothes that once hung in the changing rooms. The headframe will be the last thing on the programme: inspected, and left as it is. The museum is due to open at the end of 2026.
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Ground floor plan of Genk Mining Museum at 1:200. Walls in solid black (400 mm concrete), openings as breaks with glazing lines, structural grid lettered and numbered; spaces: galleries, hall, ramp.
Drawing set · 4 sheets
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