About forty minutes by car from Düsseldorf in the direction of Neuss is the Hombroich Island Museum. Known primarily within Germany at first, the place gained worldwide popularity after the American magazine "Art News" included it in 2004 in its list of "10 supermuseums you've never heard of."
The museum was founded in 1987 by the German businessman Karl-Heinrich Müller (1936 - 2007). His personality is surrounded by rumors and even legends; several books have been written about him. During his lifetime, the media often discussed that he had only one suit and no interest in a luxurious life, and that he invests all the considerable funds earned from the real estate business in Hombroich and the purchase of new works of art. Müller, indeed, with manic enthusiasm was engaged in the development of his brainchild: at some point he even closed his main business and began to give one hundred percent of his time and finances to the island.
It all started at the end of the 20th century, when Herr Müller bought a small estate on the outskirts of Neuss and declared it an island. This place in the floodplain of the Erft River can be called an island only metaphorically, because the water barrier separating the estate from the surrounding territory is overcome in literally one jump. But Müller still insisted that Hombroich is an island (moreover, in German this word is feminine, and in his poetic dedications to the museum, the author refers to him as a woman), noting that “everything goes wrong here, as in everyday life."
The transformation of the former farmland into a museum with artificial ponds, gardens and flower beds was the responsibility of Müller's friend, landscape architect Bernhard Korte. In general, the "Hombroich team" consisted entirely of friends and associates of the collector, and, according to their own opinions, the relationship between them could be called family. Another friend and associate of Müller, sculptor Erwin Heerich, created exhibition pavilions for a large-scale art collection created by the collector over the years. It is necessary to note one detail, which we will return to a little later: most of the structures of the "island" were built by him from old dark Dutch bricks with a "history" - from previously dismantled buildings.
On the "Hombroich Island" there are no signatures to works of art, and they themselves are adjacent to each other, not obeying the chronology or the principle of trends and styles. That is why art critics consider this museum to be hedonistic: here the authorship of the work or its belonging to a particular time does not matter much, only the pleasure that the viewer receives from it is important. In the era of museums that are either educational or mixed, educational-hedonistic, in nature (most of them), Mueller's project stands out against the general background. In addition to the exhibition pavilions, Hombroich Island has a café, several houses where artists work and live, a space for exhibitions and concerts, as well as a House of Creativity, which is used as the Pink House - the original manor building.
In 1995 Karl-Heinrich Müller bought and incorporated into the museum the site of the former NATO missile base (it ceased operations in 1989). All brochures and catalogs on Hombroich Island included a poster from its checkpoint, which read: “Attention! Guarded military zone! and detailing prohibited activities, including taking photographs. When Müller first visited the plot he had bought and saw this list, he decided to allow absolutely everything here and open this new part of the museum for free 24 hours a day. The military past of the territory is not denied in any way, for example, the address of the Hombroich Island Foundation is Raketenstation Hombroich, 4, and the base was not demolished, but remade: for example, under the residences where writers, architects, artists who receive grants from the foundation live. This foundation was founded after Mueller ran out of funds for the maintenance of the museum, and he donated it to the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the city and district of Neuss. The collector was the permanent chairman of the fund's board of trustees until his death. At the Hombroich Rocket Base, you can also see new buildings - designed by Tadao Ando, Alvaro Siza, Raymond Abraham and other prominent masters, but let's talk about everything in order.
Tadao Ando was invited to visit the missile base by Müller and was so inspired by the collector's idea that he began sketching possible designs for the area. Some of the sketches were liked by the Langen family, who decided to order a museum building for the architect for their collection of works of art from "classical" modernism, Japan and other countries of Asia, the Maghreb, and pre-Columbian America. Subsequently, Marianne Langen noticed that Ando's building "was the most expensive and large-scale work she acquired for her collection."
What
The Langen Foundation was designed by Tadao Ando, it is readable instantly: the scenographic organization of the space around the museum with cherry trees, a semicircular four-meter wall with a portal cut into it, a shallow pool with clear water, the building itself, made of glass, steel and concrete panels the size of tatami, clearly reflect the architect's handwriting … On the ground floor, in addition to the tiny porter and café area, there is a long and narrow gallery, conceived by Ando as a "space of tranquility" specifically for the exhibition of Asian art. The halls of modernism and temporary exhibitions are located underground. The Langen Foundation is undoubtedly a beautiful, thoughtful and in a good way a theater building, but the art there pales in comparison to the architecture. The building has much more power and energy and does not at all serve as a frame for exhibits: on the contrary, they are lost against its background. Interesting fact: most visitors come to the Langen Foundation for the building, not the art collection. The exposition here, by the way, does not obey the hedonistic concept of the "Hombroich Islands" at all and is scrupulously signed and sorted by eras, styles and other characteristics.
The next architectural object of the Rocket Base, which I would like to dwell on, is the building of the Museum of Architecture - an archive of Erwin Heerich's works designed by Alvaro Siza. We mentioned above that most of the buildings on Hombroich Island were built by Heerich from recycled Dutch bricks. Siza also uses this material in her pavilion, making a metaphorical nod to this sculptor. Heading towards this building, you need to go through an overgrown apple orchard with fruits of an extremely strange color and size, as well as "age spots" on the skin. These fruits of a rather scary look, hanging at eye level or lying underfoot, create an uncomfortable atmosphere, and also because of them, one does not fall in love with the pavilion at first sight. However, this feeling gradually comes when you go around it several times and carefully examine the details, which are given great attention here.
Unlike the Langen Foundation, the architecture of the Heerich archive is not suppressive, but mimicry. Despite the declared openness of Hombroich, the doors of most of the pavilions of the Rocket Base are still locked, and in order to look into the building of Siz, you need to contrive - find the right angle of view and avoid glare and reflexes. Then it becomes clear that the inside of the building is trimmed with wood, and the rooms, which are already read in the external volume, are light, spacious and facing nature.
Another landmark project of the Hombroich Rocket Base, which cannot be ignored separately, is the latest work of Raymund Abraham, an Austrian-American architect, by his own definition, a “convinced formalist”. Abraham passed away in 2010 and never saw his "House of Music" project fully realized. Its completion was supervised by the daughter of the architect, Una. The building is designed to accommodate and rehearse four musicians, which is why it is sometimes called the House Quartet. There are four two-story rehearsal rooms, a studio, four living quarters, a library, a courtyard and a small underground concert hall with a second light. In the center of the sloping round roof with a diameter of 33 meters, a triangle with a length of 17 meters on each side is carved. One of the apexes of the triangle points to the lookout tower left over from the NATO base. At the moment, Abraham's project is not being used for its intended purpose and is closed to the public. Abraham's Rocket Base project is considered one of his finest works, which also includes the building of the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York.
The Hombroich Rocket Base does not seem to be a German-style place today. Some of the pavilions look almost abandoned, the approaches to them are overgrown, and the once attractive Hortus conclusus - "monastery garden" - is not going through its best times. The atmosphere of the "Hombroich Island", in general, is far from harmonious: the museum frightens with its desertion and ringing silence, although writers and artists still live in the residences.
Formally independent, the Langen Foundation charges an admission fee, and you will also have to pay for tickets to some of the Hombroich pavilions - contrary to Müller's original plan of free enjoyment of art for everyone. The Hombroich Island Foundation periodically complains about the lack of funds for the maintenance of its properties, but grants are still being issued to creative people, and construction work is underway at Abraham's House of Music. It seems that the point here is not at all about money, but about the fact that Hombroich has lost the owner who loved his brainchild so much.
