Waddenworld Experience Center (WEC)
Built the case for a EUR 29 million UNESCO experience centre on the Wadden Sea, opened April 2025.
- Client
- Municipality of De Marne, Province of Groningen, Seal Center Pieterburen
- In collaboration with
- Staatsbosbeheer
The Wadden Sea is a UNESCO World Heritage site and, in a 2016 survey, the natural area Dutch people named the most beautiful in the country. It had no experience centre. Except worked with 27 local partners to turn that gap into a fundable proposition: a centre at Lauwersoog harbour where visitors meet the tidal ecosystem directly, from rare water microbes to the way the landscape has been shaped over centuries. We ran the work from first idea through site analysis, stakeholder process and concept design, to the point where an architect could be selected. EUR 29 million in funding followed. Dorte Mandrup was appointed to build it, and the centre opened in April 2025.
The Problem
The region had the asset and none of the infrastructure. A World Heritage ecosystem sat on the doorstep of a working harbour town and generated little for the people living there, across a tourist season that was short and thin.
Any centre would have to earn its keep: draw visitors year round, operate independently, and hold the support of a fragmented group of owners. The municipality of De Marne, the province of Groningen, Staatsbosbeheer and the Pieterburen Seal Center each came with a different mandate. The conventional route, a building designed first and justified afterwards, would have produced a museum nobody had agreed to fund. The brief had to be built backwards: from what the region needed economically, what the ecosystem could carry, and what 27 partners would put their name to.
Process
Cocreation with 27 partners
The concept was developed in the open, with the parties who would later have to fund and run it. Sessions with the municipality, the province, Staatsbosbeheer, the Pieterburen Seal Center and local entrepreneurs set the ambitions and tested them against what each partner could carry. Agreement was built into the concept rather than sought after it.
A centre made of parts, not one building
The concept settles on a central structure that provides shelter, heat and support, surrounded by pavilions that each hold their own experience and style. Pavilions can be added or reworked without touching the core, and expositions rotate through exchanges with sea centres in Germany and Denmark. The layout holds energy use down year round and keeps a second visit different from the first.
An investible programme, not a wish list
Except carried the work to the point of architect selection: site analysis, programme, business case and a concept design a funder could commit to. The economic ambitions were stated plainly. 250,000 visitors a year, a longer season for Lauwersoog, and independent operation without permanent subsidy. EUR 29 million in funding followed, and Dorte Mandrup's design was selected to build from it.
Outcomes
- Funding secured
- EUR 29 million
- Committed to build the centre after the concept and project plan.
- Visitors targeted
- 250,000 a year
- The figure that shaped the programme and the business case.
- Partners in cocreation
- 27
- Local and regional organisations who set the ambitions with us.
- Opened
- April 2025
- Designed by Dorte Mandrup, following Except's concept and selection process.
Gallery
Credits
Except team: Emma Westerduin (Architect and Project Manager), Jeroen van der Vlist (Chief Operations Officer (COO)), Tom Bosschaert (Director), Luca Gennari (Environmental Engineering Consultant).
With: Libera Amenta (Urban Planner, Metabolism & Circularity), Mirjam Schmüll (Urban strategist, process manager), Mirjam Snitjer (Project Assistant).
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