The museum liner was designed by the renowned architects Annette Gigon and Mike Guyer, who are also responsible for the construction of the Kirchner Museum, in Davos and the extension of the Kunstmuseum Winterthur.
Opened in 1998, the museum is dedicated to the work of the two Appenzell painter Carl August Liner and his son Carl Walter Liner. The construction therefore belongs to the type of monographic museums. Since it was clear from the beginning that the museum should be devoted primarily of the twentieth century and contemporary art, the exhibition spaces are not specifically dimensioned and configured for the paintings of Carl Liner father and son. Instead, they are designed so that they are suitable for temporary exhibitions with both classical as well as modern and contemporary art.
The sequence of spaces via the entrance hall on the south by the decreasing in volume gallery space into a read and a media room to the north. The exhibition halls are clearly defined spaces that want the art neither exaggerate nor compete. They are as cautious in detail, have bright walls and a floor of poured concrete on top. The room surfaces are kept relatively small in order to create a focused environment possible for individual works. The various room sizes are generated by a center wall and asymmetrically arranged by the successive reduction of the spatial axes from south to north.
The exposure system of the exhibition spaces with different heights and widths gables gives the typical "zig-zag" in construction volume, which is related to the abutting gable roofs of the Appenzell villages and can also think of the regular shed roof forms of commercial and agricultural buildings. The roofs are covered with sand-blasted stainless steel sheets, in order to have inside the light that is reflected back into the showrooms as directionless and color pure. The facades are made of the same material. The scaled laying the sheets and even the dull gray color of shimmering chrome steel vaguely reminiscent of the silver graying of the weather shingle facades and former shingle roofs of the traditional Appenzell buildings. Materialized in the different facades and sloping roofs, connect to a catchy little "volume Mountains" - against the background of Alpsteins.
