Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

Following on from the photographs some words:


The building is formed of an enfilade sequence of rooms set into the original villa's landscape. This composition sequence has its roots in the villa's circulation. Most rooms are galleries but with some notable exceptions: a theatre and a cafe with hearth. A mixture of artificial, side and top light is used dependant upon the room and the artworks present. The gallery's relationship with nature is informal and unforced. Sitting within the landscape, the building seeks to reveal but not disturb. Hence the line which divides art and culture is carefully articulated through glass. Major galleries are linked by spaces which are typologically similar to a corridor. However whilst linking independent spaces, these corridors exhibit small-scale paintings and sculptures and continue the theme of enfilade. Hence typologically they sit between cloister, gallery and corridor Winding through the landscape, connecting separate elements, the use of a floor to ceiling glass wall allows us simultaneously to engage visually, imagine ourselves outside in that space and protect us from the harsh reality of a Danish winter. Moving through the museum the horizon is revealed at specific moments by the architects as a desire to not overburden the potency of the art within. These views through to the park or lake are oblique as a means to soften the full-frontal force of them. Load-bearing timber columns and mullions and trees emphasise their verticality to the sky as a counterpoint the horizon.

Structural brick with timber beams supporting the roof within the top lit galleries which tend to contain sculpture. The effect of this is to emphasise the delicacy and lightness of light and the stoniness of stone. In galleries the topography of the site is mimicked in a vertical enfilade sequence from half a level to another. This sequence is linked by a short-run staircase situating the rooms within a space of public appearance via the movement of the body through the spaces.

In the park itself, broken leaves lie on the floor of a worn path down a slope  through a Richard Serra sculpture and onto the beach and sea. As the body moves down towards the sea, the only constant is the unrelenting horizon which at night is revealed by lights as Sweden.