Steven Holl Architects | Herning Museum of Contemporary Art

in Architecture by editor — 8:13 pm | November 23, 20111 comment

The Herning Center of the Arts unites three distinct cultural institutions: the Herning Museum of Contemporary Art, the MidWest Ensemble and the Socle du Monde. The new center is intended to be an innovative forum combining visual art and music. The museum’s design fuses landscape and architecture in a one-level building that will include permanent and temporary exhibition galleries, a 150-seat auditorium, music rehearsal rooms, a restaurant, a media library, and administrative offices. Herning’s prominent relationship with textiles and the Museum’s large collection of original works by Piero Manzoni (in total 46 works) form the inspiration for the concept design.

© Steen Gyldendal

The museum is sited near Herning’s original Angli shirt factory, and the shirt collar-shaped plan of its 1960s building has inspired the shape of the new museum building. Viewed from above, the roof geometry resembles a collection shirt sleeves laid over the gallery spaces: the curved roofs bring balanced natural lights to the galleries. The loose edges of the plan offer spaces for the café, auditorium, lobby, and offices. The exhibition spaces can be easily closed, while all peripheral spaces remain open for after-hours use. Truck tarps were inserted into the white concrete formwork to yield a fabric texture to the building’s exterior walls.. Gallery spaces are orthogonal and finely proportioned for art, while overhead curved roof sections transport natural light into the spaces. The galleries’ perimeter walls are load bearing elements, emphasizing these as “treasure boxes” in the museum.

© Iwan Baan

© Thomas Moelvig

Internal gallery walls of lightweight construction are movable, providing flexibility in anticipation of changing exhibitions. Floors of integral color charcoal concrete unify the ground plane into a continuous patina with a wax finish. The surrounding landscape is partially shaped in the reverse-curve of the geometry of the roof. In transforming the flat field, a new 40,000sf bermed landscape of grass mounds and pools conceals parking and service areas, while drawing focus onto reflecting pools positioned in the south sun.

© Thomas Mayer

The Herning Museum of Contemporary Art was open to the public on September 9, 2009 uniting three distinct cultural institutions: the Herning Center of the Arts, the MidWest Ensemble and the Socle du Monde. The new center is intended to be an innovative forum combining visual art and music, providing a driving cultural force for the region of central Jutland, Denmark. A fusion of landscape and architecture, the landscape of grass mounds and reflecting pools aligns with a geometry of curved roof sections in a new building that houses permanent and temporary exhibition galleries, a 150-seat auditorium, music rehearsal rooms, a restaurant, a media library, and administrative offices all on one level.

© Susan Wides

Herning’s longstanding relationship with textiles and the textile industry, as well as the museum’s large collection of original works by Piero Manzoni (in total 46 works) forms the inspiration for the building’s design concept. The museum is sited near Herning’s original Angli shirt factory and the shirt collar-shaped plan of its 1960s building has inspired the shape of the new museum building. Viewed from above, HEART’s roof geometry resembles a collection of shirt sleeves laid over the gallery spaces. The loose edges of the plan offer spaces for the café, auditorium, lobby, and offices. The exhibition spaces can be easily closed, while all peripheral spaces remain open for after-hours use.

© Susan Wides

The galleries are orthogonal in plan and finely proportioned for art, while overhead curved roof sections transport natural light into the spaces. The galleries’ perimeter walls are load bearing elements, emphasizing these as “treasure boxes” in the museum, while internal gallery walls of lightweight construction are movable. Floors of integral color charcoal concrete unify the ground plane into a continuous patina with a wax finish. Fabric tarps were inserted into the formwork to yield a fabric texture to the building’s exterior walls of white concrete.

The surrounding landscape is partially shaped in the reverse-curve of the geometry of the museum’s roof. In transforming the flat field around the site, a new 40,000 sf bermed landscape of grass mounds and pools conceals parking and service areas, while drawing the focus onto reflecting pools positioned in the south sun. The Museum will open with a new installation of the works of Italian artist Jannis Kounellis and will display its large permanent collection of Arte Povera works.

© Iwan Baan

Steven Holl Architects has realized cultural, civic, academic and residential projects both in the United States and internationally. Steven Holl Architects (SHA) is a 49 person architecture and urban design office founded in 1976, and working globally as one office from two locations; New York City and Beijing. Steven Holl leads the office with partners Chris McVoy (New York) and Li Hu (Beijing). Most recently completed is the Linked Hybrid mixed-use complex (Beijing, China), third on TIME magazine’s list of Architectural Marvels of 2007. Currently in construction are the Nanjing Museum of Art and Architecture (Nanjing, China), the Vanke Center (Shenzhen, China), Beirut Marina (Beirut, Lebanon), Cité de l’Océan et du Surf with Solange Fabião (Biarritz, France), and the large mixed-use complex in Chengdu, China: the Sliced Porosity Block. In 2007 Steven Holl Architects opened the highly lauded Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, Missouri). Recently the office has won a number of international design competitions including Sail Hybrid (Knokke-Heist, Belgium), Meander (Helsinki, Finland), the LM Harbor Gateway (Copenhagen, Denmark) and the new Center for Creative and Performing Arts for Princeton University (Princeton, New Jersey). Steven Holl is a tenured Professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture and Planning.

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