2025

auf Anfrage zugänglich

Berufschulzentrum Luisenstraße 9-11, 80333 München

Klinkerziegel, Schamottsteine, Mineralwollschale, feuerverzinkter Stahl, Steigleiter, Befeuerungsanlage für Lehrzwecke, Schornstein: 600 x 90 x 90 cm

Architecture: V-Architekten, Köln

Landscape architecture: Adler und Olesch, München

Photos: Stefan Müller-Naumann

Text: Dr. Martin Seidel

“Sewing machine meets umbrella on dissection table” is the surrealist metaphor for the freedom art can and may take. The art in architecture project by Karin Sander for the Municipal Vocational School Center of Construction and Arts and Crafts on Luisenstraße in Munich’s Maxvorstadt district does not actually involve a sewing machine and an umbrella. Yet, the red brick column that gracefully spirals six meters upwards on the school’s roof is not what one would expect on a building typical of Munich’s functional and austere post-war architecture. Large window fronts, clear spatial organization, a flat roof on the architectural side, and the historicizing look of the winding brick column are worlds apart. Viewers need not stand on the street, craning their necks, puzzling over it for long. It is quickly evident that this structure is an artistic intervention that does not really relate to the architectural language or building services, but rather to the building’s function as a school for construction and crafts. This is where bricklayers learn their trade, and more recently, chimney sweeps as well. The column, with its chimney-like form and decorative brickwork, thus becomes the logo and defining symbol of the school and its users.

Logo and identity development are fundamental requirements for art in architecture. Karin Sander, who has extensive expertise, experience, and exceptional inventiveness in the field of art and architecture, does not stop there. This is evident, from time to time, in the spectacular moments when the aspiring chimney sweeps publicly ascend the brick structure of the sculpture, equipped with a ladder, revealing the practical purpose of this artwork. For, like the teaching chimneys inside the building, this art column can also be used for educational purposes.

It is both a training chimney and a spirally twisted Salomonische Säule (Solomon’s Column). In this second aspect, the artist draws a broad arc from Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, through the columns of the baldachin ciborium in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, to similarly constructed chimneys of the 19th and 20th centuries. As a solitary sculpture whose essence, form, shape, material, and technique transcend what is necessary for practical application, the column reverts to what it has always been as a traditional architectural element: a symbol of sovereignty and dignity; here, as a nostalgically playful decorative element devoid of functional necessity, it winds around its own axis. The expression of dynamism derived from the solidity of the material and the movement of the ascending lines serves as an appeal to the school’s students. The vibrant pattern of the lines, which reach upwards with force and fluidity, is based on millennia-old art and architecture design principles that resonate with aesthetic needs rooted in human perception.

Thus, the art in architecture column by Karin Sander is not only a functional object and a symbol of inspiration but also a defining sculptural work that balances stillness and activity. It sets a striking artistic accent amid the bustle of Munich’s urban space, situated between the main train station and Königsplatz.