The Danish practice has been chosen to create a new 23,000m natural history museum within the centuries-old Great Forest to the north of Hungarys second-largest city, Debrecen.The second prize was awarded to 3XN and third prize to Hungarian practice Kzplettervez Zrtkren Mkd Rszvnytrsasg.Other teams participating in the competition included Londons Zaha Hadid Architects, Dutch firm Mecanoo, Berlins Sauerbruch Hutton with Gustafson Porter + Bowman, and rising star Lina Ghotmeh Architecture, which recently won the British Museums major upgrade contest.AdvertisementBIGs winning concept (pictured below) proposed three overlapping landscaped ribbons that gently rise from the forest floor to form a new public and scientific destination. The partially sunken structure will feature a charred timber faade.Winner: BIGBjarke Ingels, founder and creative director of BIG said: Natural history is a subject dear to me so dear that I named my eldest son Darwin. To that end, it is a great honour to have been entrusted with the authorship of the Hungarian Natural History Museum in the Great Forest of Debrecen. Our design is conceived as an intersection of paths and lineages.Intersecting ribbons of landscape overlap to produce a series of niches and habitats, halls and galleries, blending the inside and the outside, the intimate and the mastodontic in seamless continuity. The result is a man-made hill in a forest clearing; geometrically clear yet softly organic an appropriate home for the wonders of the natural world.The new museum will replace an existing institution in Budapest and is part of a wider initiative by the Hungarian government to transform Debrecen into a new regional hub for education and culture by 2030.Once complete, the new museum will house permanent and temporary exhibition halls, educational and research facilities, public amenities and back-of-house spaces.AdvertisementThe competition featured a 330,000 prize fund. The appointment comes three years after Grimshaw won an international competition to overhaul and expand Budapests main Nyugati station.