Ordrupgaard Museum expansion. Zaha Hadid. Ordrup, 2005

The existing museum building dates back to 1918 and was designed by Wilhelm Hansen.
The expansion is not intended to pick up on the idiom used in the main building, nor to adopt a passive or reverent attitude towards it. Far from it: its zoomorphic form is almost camouflaged amidst the vegetation of the park, looking around it from a position similar to that of an animal crouching curled up in the grass.
Plastic volumes and dancing lines define Hadid's architecture. The new galleries take form from obvious use of reinforced concrete, thus declaring their presence in a physical, material, sculptural language. At the same time, glass walls framed by "strips" of cement lighten up the volume and open up the view of the outdoors. Not only this, they play an almost metaphorical game in composition: the glass "cuts" the cement diagonally.