Lying on the flat landscape of Herning, is the recently completed Herning Center of the Arts designed by Steven Holl. Resembling a pile of white shirt sleeves, it forms a counterpoint to the old Angli shirt factory sitting across the street., which is shaped like a dark grey shirt collar. The "sleeves" are interwined and forms the roof of the building, draping over the spaces within, forming a convex underbelly that is reminiscent of Jørn Utzon's Bagsværd Church and the Kuwait National Assembly.
However, the most in triguing part of the building, for me, is the wrinkled concrete surface found on the exterior of the building. Created by inserting fabric tarps into the formwork in which the fresh concrete is poured - allowing the concrete to take the shape of the creases and folds created by the tarp, the wall yields a kind of softness that is hard to create using conventional casting techniques.The quality is fabric like and visually soft, uncharacteristic for concrete; the tactile nature of the wall begs the visitor to touch it, to verify its materiality. There is an element of chance involved in its creation; neither the builders nor the architects have total control of exactly what the surface would eventually look like till the formwork of the concrete has been removed. They can only set the condition in which the surface is formed, almost like playing a surrealist game.
More about the building here and here.
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