In 1994, collector and patron Karl-Heinrich Müller acquired the former NATO missile base Rake­ten­sta­tion Hombroich, which was located just a few hundred metres from Museum Insel Hombroich, which he had set up in 1986. As an antipode to this, he aimed to transform this military location into a labo­ra­tory and a place of expe­ri­men­ta­tion for the arts and inno­va­tive archi­tec­ture.

Rake­ten­sta­tion Hombroich had been commis­sioned by the US military in 1966 and was built on 13 hectares of land, where a Belgian missile squadron commenced opera­tions one year later. As part of its “line of defence stret­ching from North Cape to Turkey”, three sets of three Nike Hercules missiles (MIM-14) were stationed here. They could be fitted with a total of six nuclear warheads, which were also stored here. These rockets had a range of up to 150 kilo­me­tres and were guarded and main­tained by US soldiers.

After the bilateral agree­ments to disarm nuclear medium- and short-range missiles were signed in 1990, the area was no longer used for military purposes and was vacated in full. What remained was a desolate plot of land without any trees or shrubs, struc­tured solely through asphalt and concrete surfaces and by the earth walls that sheltered it from view.

The resett­le­ment initiated by Karl-Heinrich Müller (the first to take up residence in 1995 were composer Christoph Staude as well as artist Ute Langanky and her husband, poet Thomas Kling) involved artists and archi­tects Raimund Abraham, Tadao Ando, Erwin Heerich, Dietmar Hofmann, Oliver Kruse, Katsuhito Nishikawa, Claudio Silvestrin and Álvaro Siza in the years that followed.

Today, the Rake­ten­sta­tion is a place for artists of all disci­plines to live and work in – and is a venue for exhi­bi­tions, concerts and other events. The foun­da­tion office is also located there. The Rake­ten­sta­tion is connected to Museum Insel Hombroich through a footpath across Kirkeby-Feld and through the stretches of agri­cul­tural land.