In the final round of the art-for-architecture competition for the fencing of the Auguste Victoria Gymnasium school in Trier, the first-round concept was developed further, with the colour scales on the fence posts structured asymmetrically.
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colour scales
on the fence posts
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The art concept is based on the materials of the fencing and simply enhances them through its colours. The colour activity relates to the whole fence and extends across its entire length without focal points, i.e. without a hierarchy.
The colour activity responds to this individual location:
Response to the meaning of learning at school:
Insights are based on differentiated thinking. Insights are made possible by distinctions. In this sense, the art concept provides ways of making distinctions. Two vertical colour scales, running parallel, display colour tones that are identical, i.e. indistinguishable, at their base. As they continue, the scales move in different colour directions. The contrasts thus increase. Out of indistinguishability emerges distinguishability, which becomes clearer and clearer. In this way, the ability to distinguish is represented in this development. It becomes evident to the eye that gaining insights is subject to a process. This process can comprehend the entire period of schooling. Growing insight accompanies attendance at school. The colour scales are repeated in the sequence of the fence. They are applied at intervals in which the slight difference is not immediately noticeable. The gradations of colour are only apparent when the whole is viewed. From this the conclusion can be drawn that connections are only perceptible from a distance, when an overall view is taken.
Response to the UNESCO project school and intercultural learning:
The UNESCO project school in Trier positions itself as an international and intercultural. Variety is therefore both the message and the programme of the school. Variety does not mean either randomness or chaos, but lively contingency. Variety is animated by the principle of mutual recognition and thus of consensus. In this spirit, variety finds realisation as an ordered system of colour movement. This implies liveliness, openness and freedom as much as a meaningful, coherent logic. The logic of the colour movement consists in a continuous colour circle. It thus forms a cyclical movement without a beginning and without an end. With a shift from each post to the next, the colour scale appears in successive excerpts.
Response to the tradition of the local school:
The Auguste Viktoria Gymnasium is a school with a tradition that has developed over centuries. The institution draws a large part of its identity from this. Pupils belong to the big family of all their predecessors, with whom they share the processual dynamism of an education. There is an analogy between the growth and development of this historic institution and the growth and development of an individual education. Growth and development are therefore a motif of the art concept, in the shape of colour surfaces that are built up vertically. By depicting this motif of development as asymmetrical, a similarity to organic growth, for example the growth of plants, and thus an enhancement of life is generated.
Response to integrational and connective aspects:
The fence draws a boundary that is a clear demarcation but at the same time visually permeable. The school premises are not sealed off, but made open to eyes from outside. This openness of the fence is maintained to the full by the art concept. The sole bearer of colour is the existing fence – without any sculptural addition that might obstruct the view. Thus the fence becomes an interface. Through its colour programme, it conveys its message internally and externally – internally addressed to the pupils and the teachers, externally addressed to persons arriving and neutral passers-by. Integration and connection are realised through the fact that the inner and outer sides of the fence are interchangeable.
Response to the connection between the history of a protected monument and its use as a school:
The past and present meet in school life. They complement one another through the fact that yesterday fertilises today. The building, a listed monument, is a complex of historical forms. These forms are respected, in that no new forms, and most certainly no forms reflecting zeitgeist, are set against them. On the contrary, a different medium, that of colour, responds to the monument. The materiality of the building is confronted with the immateriality of colour. Colour is timeless – as timeless as the striving and learning of the pupils. Colour is life and thus an equivalent of the life in which all pupils participate. This aspect, life, makes the history of the monument commensurate with the present-day of the school. The colour expresses this.