2017

auf Anfrage zugänglich

Haus für Kinder Hermann-Weinhauser-Straße 28, 81673 München

zweiteilige Skulptur, Stahl, pulverbeschichtet
500 x 500 x 200 cm / 1500 x 1000 x 200 cm

Architecture: SRW Plan. Architekten, München

Landscape architecture: mahl·gebhard·konzepte Landschaftsarchitekten Stadtplaner, München

Photos: Henning Koepke

Text: Roberta De Righi

Is something that you can no longer see actually still there? Recognizing object permanence is an important stage in early childhood development. Humans develop the realization that an object still exists, even when it is beyond their sight, in the second half of their first year of life. The two Munich-based artists Tim Bennett and Susanne Wagner playfully challenge all of our cognitive abilities with a piece of architectural art: Their May Worm for the daycare center on Hermann Weinhauser Strasse also relies on the power of the imagination. For this, they have chosen and modified the form of the prototypical Bavarian symbol, the maypole.

On the building’s forecourt, which is closed in on three sides, a white-and-blue striped tube made of powdered steel rises vertically five meters into the air, then bends and wriggles horizontally along the ground before finally vanishing in front of the entrance, almost like an earthworm disappearing into the soil. On the garden side of the building, the tube reappears in the sandbox: again, it runs horizontally along the ground, making two right-angle bends, and then rises straight up, becoming an abstract, yet recognizable maypole fifteen meters high. This May Worm offers children and adults both a place to sit and a kind of balance beam for play. For the residents of the new quarter, it is also a landmark, enclosing the daycare center like a pair of parentheses.

Does the May Worm really crawl underneath the building? Only one thing will help you find out: digging. That means the children’s unstructured play in the sandbox can be interpreted as a daily exercise in empirical research.