Archiprix International 2001
Universität Kassel, Fachbereich 06 - Architektur, Stadtplanung, Landschaftsplanung - Kassel, Germany
Tina Grone
Tutors: Tom Jefferies, Hans Frei
My aim is to solve the conflict of being linked with a place and being without any place. Therefore I combine historical landscape visions of the later baroque period with the contemporary demands of functionality and building briefing. I am trying to investigate the 'objectness' in architecture in the age of digitalisation. I create buildings which are only perceived as 2D-images. I designed a service station with its surroundings in the middle of Germany. The nearby town of Kassel is famous for the impressive park Wilhelmshöhe which may become listed as UNESCO cultural heritage. The site of the service station is situated in the suburban area around the motorway A7. Main retail centers and transport services use the industrial area to build up their headquaters. A Hessian village is situated close by. The site is grotesque. I decided to exaggerate the diversity. My work consists of four elements: the design catalogue, the tablecloth with the drawings printed on it, and a light box showing a selection of images. Finally a tune on the CD gives an impression what is happening when one passes by the service station on the motorway without visiting it. The installation tries to point out how captivating architecture is usualy presented. The process starts with the design catalogue. It contains five equations describing my approach. It deals with making a service station site-specific. Service stations all over the world are similar. Attempts to connect buildings and motorways with the surroundings have ended up so far in brown signs showing icons of monuments or various castles. To avoid this, I make a reference to the Park Wilhelmshöhe in different ways. I am not using pictures in the postmodern sense of decorated sheds. Services, fuel station, motel and the landscape design itself present altered mixtures of picture and object. The rather ruinous castle 'Löwenburg' provides the body for the service area. The impressiveness of the main castle is an analogy to the inflated fuel station. A picture of a tree becomes a built object. The avenue is an equivalent for a section of the path with popmusic lyrics. The signs seen there are romantic in a wider sense. The meander-like path system for cars as well as for pedestrians refers to the park design as a whole. Buildings have no tectonics thanks to a seamless synthetic surface. Thank You.