Museum Langen Foundation
Designed by the Japanese architect Tadao Ando in 2004, the Museum Langen Foundation is located in the countryside of the small town of Neuss.
The Langen Foundation is located at the Raketenstation Hombroich, a former NATO base, in the midst of the idyllic landscape of the Hombroich cultural environment.
The building has double-skin volume and two half-buried temporary exhibition wings with a total area of 900 mq; the structure mainly consists of reinforced concrete, glass and steel.
Visitors enter through a cut-out in the semicircular concrete wall, opening up the view to the glass, steel and concrete building.
A path, bordered by a row of cherry trees, guide visitors around the pond to the entrance on the longitudinal side of the building.
The glass envelope, supported by steel girders, protects the perimeter around the 76 meter long, 10.8 meter wide and 6 meter high concrete core. Reflections in the glass skin and in the water of the shallow pond dissolve borders and communicate an impression of weightlessness.
The building is composed of two architecturally distinct complexes: a long concrete structure within a glass envelope and, at a 45 degree angle, two parallel concrete wings buried six meters deep in the earth and protruding only 3.45 meters above it. A grand stairway between the two wings of the building leads back to ground level.
The Langen Foundation is a masterpiece composed of lines and a fascinating interplay between inside and outside, art and nature, massiveness and lightness. It is a constructed place that is not only an envelope for art but also exhibits itself.
At the end, the Ando's building is an unique experience creating a dialogue between building material and nature through the combination of these different elements.
(Text source: arcspace.com)
