These shimmering boxes have been the centre of attention in Lens, an unadorned city in northern France, for the past few months: here, in a former coal-mining district, the country’s most renowned museum is presenting some of its masterpieces. Five of the region’s cities competed for the museum project, and Lens, a city with a population of 35?000 that – thanks to its location on the TGV route – is well connected to Paris, Lille and London, was selected. In 2005 the architecture firm SANAA won the international competition with a design that captivated the architectural world with its weightlessness. Surrounded by the blue-collar-workers’ simple homes and nestled in a new park, the five nearly rectangular, subtly curved segments of the building line up next to each other amid the former coal fields. With their shimmering aluminium skins – in which both the surroundings and the different moods created by the changing light are reflected chimerically – at first glance they bring to mind a large land art installation that merges with the sky. Yet the ensemble does make an unapproachable imprssion: as central ‘piazza’, the entrance building, whose four walls are glazed, can be entered from different sides. From here the visitor may proceed to the exhibition buildings on both sides of it, and may continue onto the auditorium or the glass pavilion. To create this spacious, flowing sequence of spaces, the architects situated the auxiliary rooms, workshops, depot, and building services on the lower level; the restaurant and administration each occupy a freestanding structure in the park.