HOLL: STEVEN HOLL HEART

HEART Herning Museum of Contemporary Art in Herning, Denmark is a new building designed by the renowned American architect Steven Holl. He showed a keen interest in the project, first of all because the museum owns a unique collection by the Italian conceptual arte povera-artist Piero Manzoni. In 1960 Manzoni was invited to Herning for the first time by Aage Damgaard, the owner of a well-known shirt factory. Aage Damgaard's interest in contemporary art resulted in a visionary model for cooperation between businesses and artists - and in founding a museum.Holl's complex structures are surrounded by a landscape of hills and ponds which fits in the environment. The single-story building, with its natural light and innovative roof construction, refers to the formal vocabulary of the factory opposite from the 1960s in the circular shape of a collar. From a bird's-eye perspective the new building recalls outstretched shirt sleeves and the in situ façade has a surface resembling a wrinkled white shirt.