The exhibition centre initiated and founded by art collector Marianne Langen.

The foundation showcases a collection of Oriental Art and Modern Art.

It is located on a former missile base in the midst of the Lower Rhine countryside. Designed by Japanese architect and PritzkerPrize winner Tadao Ando, creating an intense connection between interior and exterior space.

Site area: 120,220 square meters Building area: 1,860 square meters Completed: 2004

Tadao Ando

PANAROMIC EXTERIOR VIEW

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 ticket office and museum shop break through the concrete core and connect with the northern side of the glass envelope, where the border between inside and outside can be experienced along its entire length. The polished concrete floor is inlaid with turquoise illuminated strips.

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 long and narrow (43 x 5.4 meters) exhibition room in the concrete core, reserved for the Langen Foundation Japanese collection, receives daylight through linear light rails worked into the ceiling.

On the south side of building, between the concrete core and the glass envelope, the pathway descends slightly toward the mezzanine overlooking the 8 meter tall exhibition wings containing the Modern I and Modern II galleries.

The two galleries, each 436 square meters, have identical dimensions but appear very different. In Modern I a concrete ramp takes up almost half of the space where as Modern II presents itself in pure size and monumentality. The two galleries receive daylight through central narrow skylights with adjustable slats.

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.