2018

auf Anfrage zugänglich

Haus für Kinder Therese-von-Bayern-Straße 22, 81737 München

Farbkonzept für Foyer und Spielflure

Architecture: Franz Steinberger Architekt, München

Landscape architecture: Kattinger und Kattinger Landschaftsarchitekten, Zolling

Photos: Seeberger. Buss

In the foyer of the day care center at Therese von Bayern Strasse 22, a luminous, colorful stairwell that also acts as a kind of directional guide awaits the children. Crisscrossing, sometimes ascending slightly, sometimes abruptly changing direction, colorful stripes cover the entire wall of the stairwell up to the second floor. Here, they unravel, running in orderly paths along the baseboards and from door frame to door frame at lintel height—comparable to the “sky” and the “ground” in “children’s drawings”—connecting the corridors and the play area to the center of the building.

Heribert Heindl’s work of art is mainly conceived for the smallest of the building’s inhabitants. The visual arrangement allows the artist to adjust the environment to a child-size scale: as the color changes from door to door the corridors appear shorter, while the colored stripes running along the wall above the doors make the “sky” appear closer, which in turn makes the whole ceiling look lower. The child is the measure of all things.

A potpourri of colors is created in the corridors. Given the rhythm of the existing architecture, the color combination changes with each door frame. The artist, who has also developed color concepts for the Messestadt West subway station and the vocational school on Riesstrasse, among other sites, uses his own blend of the three primary and secondary colors. He drew inspiration for the palette knife technique he used to apply the paint from children’s craft projects, in order to make it look like the stripes, with their sliced and torn edges, are reminiscent of “coloring outside the lines.” The heterogenous application of paint provides the bands with a sculptural dimension that gives wings to the imagination: Are the children standing in tall grass, or perhaps in front of a mountain massif? Could it be an alien planet with a red sky?! In every case, Heindl’s AS ABOVE, SO BELOW creates a great deal of space for imaginary adventures in the world in between.