In June 2023 a proposal was submitted for an art-for-architecture competition for the secondary school in Wartiner Strasse in the Berlin district of Lichtenberg. The proposal is for an artistic system that relates to the entire school building, under the slogan “Free Development in the Community”.
in the outdoor area
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in the outdoor area
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in the outdoor area
(photomontage)
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icon of the school
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for each year
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(photomontage)
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within each year
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individual
pupils’ icons
within a class
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an individual
pupil’s icon
across the years
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Education serves the goal of developing. Development requires freedom to grow. This is the promise made by the school. It provides free development in a community. It is the school community that promotes education, development and growth. Free development in a community is therefore the message of the art concept.
The theme of free development is made visible in a sign-like structure on the basis of a centrifugal arrangement: outdoors as a walk-through sculpture, indoors as a mural. The theme of community is made visible above all through systematic application. From this formal basis emerges an icon for the school as a whole, and furthermore icons for the different years, then icons for classes within each year, and finally icons for the individual pupils.
This creates identification: with the school, with the year, with the class. The individual icons are a unified entity subsumed within the icon of the class. The class icons are subsumed in those of the year. All icons, finally, are subsumed within the icon of the school. In this way, the artistic system not only makes the community visible, but creates community.
The practical application consists of many optional alternatives. First of all it provides a system of orientation, both in the signage of buildings and rooms, and also in organisation: in tables, forms, the timetable. Furthermore, it would be possible to devise items of clothing that reinforce the feeling of belonging: T-shirts, sweatshirts, baseball caps, headbands, pulse warmers etc. The individual icons can be made available to the pupils: as stickers, as screensavers, as e-mail signatures or simply as a vector file to be used as desired.
In this way art for architecture becomes art for the school, in the school – an art for everyone and an art that is transported beyond the school.