Energetic loops reminiscent of electromagnetic field lines will define the architecture of the new Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade, Serbia.
Designed by global firm Zaha Hadid Architects in collaboration with architectural and urban planning studio Bureau Cube Partners of Serbia, the project will renovate the city’s historic Milan Vapa Paper Mill to serve as the new home for the Nikola Tesla archive. Zaha Hadid expects construction to be complete in 2027.
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Born in 1856 in modern-day Croatia, Nikola Tesla gained experience working in telephony in Europe before launching a productive career as an engineer and inventor in the electric power industry in the United States. He played a key role in establishing alternating current instead of direct current as the standard for electric power transmission, famously authoring nine of the 13 patents used in the Adams Station hydroelectric plant at Niagara Falls, which sent power 25 miles away to Buffalo, New York, using two-phase alternating current.
In addition to electric generation and transmission, Tesla’s patents touched on other areas such as radio transmission, bladeless turbines, and even a system to use Earth as a conductor for worldwide wireless transmission.
What will be on display
In 2003, UNESCO added Tesla’s archive to its Memory of the World Register, which aims to protect and make accessible the world’s documentary heritage. The archive includes Tesla’s correspondence with colleagues, friends, and family as well as documentation on his inventions and experiments. It also includes his personal library, scientific papers, and manuscripts.
Belgrade’s Milan Vapa Paper Mill opened in 1924 and is recognized as Serbia’s first modern factory. Although it was abandoned about a decade ago, it was protected for its cultural importance by Belgrade’s Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, according to written press material from Zaha Hadid. The project to convert the mill preserves the nation’s industrial heritage while improving the accessibility of the Nikola Tesla Museum, which currently stands in another part of the city.
The Urban Planning Institute of Belgrade in 2024 conducted an anonymous design contest that sought architectural and urban conceptual design for the new museum to preserve, study, and exhibit the Tesla archive.
“This archive is of enormous value not only for researchers and historians but also for a wider public because it provides an insight into (the) life and work of one of the most important scientists in the history of mankind,” according to the contest program.
Zaha Hadid and Bureau Cube were announced as the contest’s winners in January.
The new design anchors itself around the paper mill’s existing chimney, “an iconic historic element of the old factory, a recognizable feature visible from afar,” said Manuela Gatto, Zaha Hadid’s project director of the museum project. “We have chosen to reinforce its structure, repurposing it as a vertical transport element, guiding visitors to a rooftop restaurant and, ultimately, to a lookout platform.”
The museum’s roof shapes itself in response to the chimney, gradually morphing in form and material from the mill’s classic roof to contemporary skylights. The design presents “a smooth transition from solid to transparent and a harmonious contrast between history and modernity,” Gatto said.
Spoked wheel principle
The roof-and-skylight design uses the spoked wheel principle, which Gatto says allows for greater structural efficiency than conventional cantilever roofs. The wheellike tension system will use ring beams where the roof folds with girders spanning radially between the beams. No girder will span more than 8 meters.
“Two tension rings are arranged along the outer and inner perimeters,” Gatto said. “The outer ring is anchored to the surrounding structural walls and slabs, and the inner ring is anchored to the chimney in the center. Connected by structural girders, the rings next to the tension rings will be in compression to achieve an overall balanced structural system, allowing the ring in the middle to remain neutral.”
The museum’s 13,400-square-meter interior will continue the sweeping curves of the roof with a circular portal in the factory’s western facade that opens to a triple-height central atrium surrounding the chimney. Ellipsoidal openings carved within the walls will form a series of “spherical voids that create an extended perspective viewed from the western entrance,” according to Zaha Hadid.
A 12-megavolt transformer will serve as the centerpiece of the Tesla Electronic Transformer Gallery. Other museum amenities include a cafe, multipurpose hall, rooftop restaurant, and a glass-floor balcony built into the chimney that will give visitors a chance to enjoy the surrounding Belgrade waterfront from 40 meters above the ground.
Saša Kostić, Bureau Cube partner and chief architect, says the building will leverage the area’s geothermal resources, using water-to-water heat pumps to power the heating and cooling systems. For electrical power, the roofs will integrate photovoltaic panels that work in tandem with a battery-storage system. Rainwater collection for nonpotable purposes and passive design strategies will further reduce the building’s energy consumption.
