At the end of April 2016 a competition proposal for a design for the Europa School in Munich was submitted. The task is to impart a theme to the walls of five staircases, numerous corridors and rooms for breaks as well as a sports hall by means of one complete image system for all areas. The theme is the interaction of schoolchildren from many – almost all – European countries.
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The artistic approach:
The intention of the art concept “gern beieinand” is to create pleasure – not to teach, to make an appeal or to admonish, but to address the school pupils in emotional terms, to stimulate their optimism, their exuberance, their imagination and their zeal. This approach creates identification: with the school as an institution and with everyday school life, with the teachers and the other pupils, with the idea and the daily reality of Europe, with the place and time, and above all with their own role and their own horizons. The art concept aims to guide young people to themselves. In its aesthetic of youthful, unburdened and fresh perception, it opens up.
Formal implementation:
The theme is the youthful interaction of European schoolchildren. The national flags of all European countries are a background of motifs from which abstract images are generated. The images are unambiguously associated with the flags and, in particular, take up the theme of their colours. The colours are the life in these “official symbols of sovereignty”. They are also what connects the diverse individual flags. In this way the bands of colour become the actor in the visual event. The flags appear as forms arising from the dynamics of the colour bands, and they appear as locations that are linked by the colour bands. These links, the active part of the image structures, dominate the static binding of colours in the flags.
Relationship to the architecture:
The polygonal principle and systematic departure from right angles is a characteristic of the architecture that lends the school building its charisma and its life. This principle is confirmed and reinforced by the art concept. The polygonal dominates the orthogonal. The art gives resonance to the architecture.
Placement:
The art concept has been created to achieve an omnipresent effect. It can be applied to the surfaces freely and adapted to the different wall formats. On corridor walls and in rooms for breaks, it occurs sporadically, in an effective rhythm, everywhere, again and again. In the five staircases it unfolds over walls and stair stringers by giving each staircase its own colour mood and its own identity. On the impact walls of the sports hall it generates tension and dynamism. On all surfaces it forms free movement, as if it had been spontaneously written on the wall. All European flags will appear several times, in constantly changing combinations and connections.