Langen Foundation / HombroichLocation: near Neuss, North Rhine-Westphalia, Ger-many.

Architect: Tadao Ando (Japan)

Date: 2002.8-2004.7

Site: On the grounds of the Museum Insel Hombroich; 1,040 Acres Material: Reinforced concrete; Glass; steel.

Program: Museum

“Architecture, which acquires tranquillity and balance thanks to geometric order, obtains dynamism thanks to natural phenomena and human movements.” -Tadao Ando

Material:

According to Lacayo, Richard, the author of Taoda Ando: “Pale gray con-crete. It's exactly what you would expect from him. It's pale, gray, serene, economical, subdued and, from most angles, pretty splendid.” This material, pale gray concrete has became Ando’s symbolistic material which is applied in many places around the globe, such as Tokyo, Newyork, Berlin, Paris and Shanghai. He focus on the feelings provided by this typical material that are smoothness, the feeling of firmness, warmness and coldness. Ando usually apply it on the exterior surface of architecture without adding any ornaments. The small round holes on the surface of the pale grey concrete are sheave bolts, Pale grey concrete represents rhythems of light and shadow. Traditional Japanese methods also applied into the technique of mixing concrete by Ando to make the surface of concrete strikingly smooth hence it loses the feeling of heavyness. In this way, “the space feels weightless.”

Progam:

1,040 acres of land is being planned for an experiment in living with nature, where architects and artists from this list each envision his or her own program and its accompanying design. This latter effort, coordinated by the Berlin ar-chitectural office of Hoidn Wang Partner, is known as the “Hombroich space-placelab,” and requires that at least 90 percent of each site be left for nature.Ando got involved with the art program at Hombroich through the instigation of Müller, who knew of Ando’s museums in Japan and the United States [re-cord, March 2003, page 98; May 2002, page 171]. Ando’s crafted concrete geometric forms interact compellingly with light, water, and earth in a manner that fits in with the Hombroich identity. In 1995, Ando designed an art pavilion for Müller on the former missile base; it appealed to another German art collec-tor, Marianne Langen, who was searching for a home for the art that she had amassed with her late husband, Viktor, a businessman, which they had housed in Switzerland. In 2002, Ando revised his scheme to include 9,688 square feet of exhibition space for the Langens’ 500 works of Japanese art, dating from the 12th to the 19th centuries, and about 300 works of Modern Western art by Cezanne, Warhol, and Rothko, among others.

Characteristic for many of the buildings designed by this Pritzker awardee is the visible structure of the in-stalled formwork panel of smoothed concrete, which is oriented to the size of the Tatami mats and, together with the holes of the form-work anchors, yields a dis-tinctive visage. In the Lan-gen Foundation building these structures are con-sistently visible, even from the inside in places.

Geometry:

Rectangular and circle to create “pure space”According to Tadao Ando: “I believe that if a building is to crystalize as architecture, it must have three moments.”The first is place. Place is the prerequisite that sustains the “force” of ar-chitecture. The vocation of architecture is to perceive the ineffable logic of place, the peculiar force generat-ed by a place and respond to it.The second moment is geometry, of which the Pantheon is an excellent example. Geometry sus-tains the core or the framework which is the re-ality of architecture. The shapes such as Platonic volumes, but in many cases it involves three-dimensional frames. For me the latter seem to be purer geometrically.And the third moment is nature, but I do not mean nature in tis un-touched state but what we might call man-made nature. I mean nature that has been given some kind of order, that ha been changed from cha-os and abstracted in to certain order, abstracted light, abstracted water, ab-stracted wind. When this kind of nature is introduced into architecture composed of raw materi-als and geometry, we find that on the contrary the architecture is abstracted.

Light:

Taoda Ando regards building and na-ture as equally important elements of architectural design, and sunlight, as a essential part of nature is muni-pulated to record time and purify the building which means make the build-ing seen more simple in order to pro-vide people a peaceful experience It is said that Sunlight can purify archi-tecture, it also represents a basic re-lationship between light and human.

Landscape

As Ando says, “The Langen Foundation has been de-signed to blend in with nature in the same way as the existing Insel Hombroich Museum... a reflecting pond asbstrctly links the architecture and untamed natre. Visitor are allowed within touching distance of the su-perb works of art displayed, with no barriers, in the midst of a beautiful landscape.“ The glass, steel and concrete building is approached by passing through an opening in a broad curved concrete building is ap-proached y passing through an opening in a broad curved concrete wall. A path lined with cherry trees leads past the pond to the building.

Space

As Ando explains, “In re-sponse to the program, two spaces of different characters were conceived. The one for Eastern Art is ‘still‘ space filled with soft light, and the other one for modern art is a ‘dy-namic‘ space crisscrossed by light. The ‘still‘ space consists of concrete and glass boxes, one nested inside the other to create on the perimeter a buf-fer zone similar to the veran-da-like engawa that is afea-ture of traditional Japanese architecture. The aim was to create continuity of interior and exterior space, so that vis-

titors inside the museum feel as if they are walking in the woods. The ‘dynamic‘ space as twin enclosed volumes is half-buried in the ground, with light dramatically intro-duced by skylights. the con-trast to the ‘still‘ space makes the drama of light even more vivid to visiters.”

Work site

Nussaume, Yann, and Tadao Ando. “Buildings as Indicators of Space.” Tadao Ando. Basel: Birkhauser, 2009. 144-45. Print. Blaser, Werner. “Langen Foundation.” Tadao Ando: Bauen in Die Erde = Sunken Courts. Sulgen: Niggli, 2007. N. pag. Print.

Ando, Tadao. “Langen Foundation.” Tadao Ando 0: Process and Idea. Tokyo: TOTO, 2010. 252-53. Print

Jodidio, Philip, and Tadao Ando. Ando: Complete Works. Koln: Taschen, 2004. Print.

“Langen Foundation deutschenglish.” Historie. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Sept. 2014. <http://langenfoundation.de/in-dex.php?id=10&L=1>.