by Nanna Marcus Husby

The topic of this thesis is a qualitative examination of ways in which the spatial environment at Museum Insel Hombroich elicit conditions for contemplation. The basis is found in the assumption that the retreat from everyday surroundings, semiotic signs, and habits induces openness to contemplative reflection.

Twelve pavilions, designed by the German sculptor Erwin Heerich, situated in a romantic landscape park, constitute the framing elements of the museum. Erected in a harmonious relationship with the existing topography, the pavilions have implicit respect for the landscape and this interconnectivity assumes a morphological presence. This impression is, for example, emphasised by vacuous space within certain pavilions; thus an apparent lack of exhibited objects enhances a perception of the built structures as autonomous walk-in-sculptures.

The visitor at Museum Insel Hombroich will find no guidelines, nor any information about the exhibits, apart from a simple plan of the museum-landscape. A fundamentally different approach to the didactic value-laden idea of the Museum is instead expressed in the minimalist aesthetic presentation, devoid of interpretative content, leading the visitor towards a direct, or holistic, experience in the meeting with art, architecture and landscape as a Gesamt-kunstwerk. Apart from slowing down the pace of the visitor, a lack of orientation within each individual pavilion and the natural landscape seems to prompt the visitor to search for alternative directional intimations. Consequently, this leads to a higher degree of sensitivity towards the surroundings.

Although no canonical guidelines can be said to exist for the creation of contemplative space, my examination of the pavilions and landscape at Museum Insel Hombroich indicates that several strategies may optimize the conditions for contemplation. The lack of signage, reductive aesthetics, absence of the everyday world and its habits, a loss of orientation (emotionally as well as topographically) combined with a slowing of pace, are strategies to encourage the curious visitor to deviate from the Everyday.