2023

auf Anfrage zugänglich

Grundschule an der St.-Veit-Straße 46, 81673 München

Toranlage: Stahl/ Lärche, 280 x 480 x 8 cm
Regal: Lärche, 273 x 440 x 45 cm
Holzbuch 1 (Muster), 30 st.: Lärche, Pflanzenteile, 36 x 26 x 12 cm
Holzbuch 2 (Rohling), 60 st.: Birke, 28 x 19 x 8 cm
Holzbuch 3 (Rohling): 60 st. Birke, 22 x 15 x 6 cm
Schubkästen, 9 st.: Birke, 40 x 690 x 40 cm / 40 x 34 x 40 cm

Architecture: Balda Architekten, Fürstenfeldbruck

Landscape architecture: Keller Damm Kollegen, München

Photos: Henning Koepke

Text: Peter Funken

With the “Xylotheque (1) in the Green Classroom”, developed by Sven Kalden for the elementary school on St.-Veit-Straße in Munich, the artist refers to a concept of collecting and communicating that arose in the late eighteenth century. In 1771 Carl Schildbach, the zoo warden in Kassel, began setting up an extensive archive of different kinds of wood and other components of domestic gardens. Schildbach’s “wood library” became the model for all other archives of wood that came later. Sven Kalden also pursues these initial ideas about collecting. In his xylotheque, a wooden box has been built for each type of tree, where branches, dried leaves, fruits, seeds, and texts are on display. Kalden made thirty of these “wood books” out of larch, with each one assigned to a particular kind of tree. There are also 120 more empty wooden boxes. From now on, students are able to design and fill these plain boxes, using natural materials from trees, shrubbery, hedges, and bushes. The school helps to coordinate the collection of materials, so that Kalden’s xylotheque will gradually become more extensive, complete, and detailed over time. The artist will oversee the project for three years, then hand it over to the school administration.

It is exciting that “the Xylotheque in the Green Classroom” takes a look at our future—one that will bring higher temperatures to Europe and Germany. We must now think about which kinds of trees will thrive in a warmer future, because many native trees will either not do well or die in this situation.

This is why Sven Kalden has made boxes for collecting climate-resistant types of wood that are rarely seen in our parks and arboretums but may very well soon be covering large swaths of land here—such as the gingko, the Japanese zelkova (related to the elm), or the river birch, also known as the copper birch. The latter two are tried and true “urban trees,” able to endure drought, heat, and frost, and to improve the condition of depleted soil, as well.

Kalden’s xylotheque is a green work of art, combining knowledge of and experience in biology and botany with the methods and processes of both art and crafts. In this sense, the wood library gives rise to concrete, imaginary images of our world in a different way, one that inspires school children to actively participate with the project, get involved, gain knowledge, and take on responsibility—for the xylotheque entrusted to them, for nature and the environment, and thus also for healthy trees in our parks and forests.

1) The word “xylotheque” is derived from the Greek “xylothiki”, a place or space for wood.