Univers Condensed

Spatial installation and solo exhibition in the > Architektur Galerie Berlin
09.09.–22.10.2011
Collabrator: Laura Casado Albo
Photos: Marcus Bredt (inside), Silke Helmerdig (outside)
Realised with the support and expertise of the companies Alutecta, Brillux, Ebener, Giese, HD Wahl

The show borrows its title from a fonttype: "Univers Condensed" is a slender and elegant, yet economical version of the famous font sans serif font by Adrian Frutiger. It is the typeface of that we use in our CI. "Univers Condensed" also refers also to two aspects of the spatial installation that, instead of showing our projects, we set up for the Architektur Galerie Berlin and that are characteristic of our design approach: With a few, precise interventions that correspond to its specific features, the gallery space is converted transformed and at the same time radicalized. For the installation theV visual and bodily experience as well as the intellectual comprehension play a constitutive role in the installation.

A two-meter high, coloured frieze fills takes up the upper half of the gallery`s long gallery back wall. It consists of over 30 small narrow aluminium panels mounted flush with the white wall. The existing, off-center positioned opening leading to the back office sets the pace with its dimensions; in turn it obtains athe grid of the panels more makes it appear precisely positioned. The panels arThe aluminium ise colour-anodized. ; tThe full full range of colours and shades offered by the Sandalor process is maxed outexploited. The arrangement of the colours corresponds to the spectral curve. Through the colour and luminosity gradients and through the material´s matt gloss of the material the flat wall gains depth. Instead of being a carrier of images, which are usually positioned on the lower half of the wall, it now becomes the dominant architectural element.

Two huge mirrors at both ends multiply the gallery room. The space points reaches out beyond itself, it illustratesing the location of the former shopgallery within the urban setting of Karl-Marx-Allee, a seemingly endless socialist showcase boulevard. Visually without limits, the space still retains measure:, it It is structured by the rhythms of the colour frieze lighting and and the wall opening the colour frieze as well as by the staccatos of the facade pillars and the lightsand the wall openings.

With its colour-anodized aluminium panels, the installation refers back to the > Biomedical Research Centre of the University of Giessen University. There, the facade of the hand-shaped building is characterized by a gradient that assigns a basic colour to each finger. The colour circle is closed and the facadefaçade, lacking any corners, appears by the lack of corners as if it were infinite.

In the second gallery space, the installation is complemented by a series of photographs by Andrew Alberts focussing on the movement arround the Giessen façade.