Brief: Design of the forecourt of the elementary school and daycare center at Pfeuferstraße 1, Munich.

The classic stone facade that closes the front of the building can be compared to a face that represents the architecture to the outside world. The glass façade of modernism, on the other hand, functions as a shop window and a mirror. Sabine Hornig - who consistently works with architectures and architectural elements in her art - plays a highly complex game with the glass school façade as a display window, mirror and image surface, transforming it optically-symbolically into the public face of the school.

Anyone approaching the school facade sees a half-closed white curtain. It turns out to be an illusion, a large-scale screen print on glass. On the panes of the façade, seemingly clear boundaries begin to oscillate, boundaries between image and reality, mirror image and photograph, between interior and exterior space, depth of space and glass surface, between what lies in front of us and what lies behind us. When we stand in front of the façade, the houses and trees behind us are reflected. If we turn around, the trees have disappeared. Part of the „reflection“ turns out to be a photograph. Quite obviously, the memory of what we perceive, and the remembered images are an important instrument of our construction of reality.

The face of the building, which points to the school as a school, is created not least by the „attributes“ brought into play in the photos. Where the curtain opens, the view falls on a bookshelf and folders. The garland of photographed balloons stretched over the entrance accompanies the children‘s daily entry into the school and welcomes them with bright colors. (Text by Heinz Schütz)


Photos: Arwed Messmer