2017

öffentlich zugänglich

Haus für Kinder Josef-Obenhin-Straße 1, 80634 München

Objekte aus Kalkstein, Basalt und Marmor

Architecture: Karlundp Architekten, München

Landscape architecture: Werner Franz Landschaftsarchitekt, München

Photos: Jens Weber

Text: Roberta De Righi

Rare flowers grow in the daycare center at Josef Obenhin Strasse 1 in Neuhaus, a neighborhood of Munich. Below the covered entrance in front of the door, four stems are inlaid in the ground. Three of them culminate in stone flowers that rise up three-dimensionally out of the surface: one three-leafed bloom made of light Jura limestone and a four-leafed beauty made of Eifel basalt are on either side of a magnificent, five-leafed flower of red Asiago marble in the center. The bent stems are made of green granite; the outermost one ends in a spiral that points around the corner of the building.

The Munich-based artist Rita Hensen designed Stone Flowers – Flower Stones, whose diameters vary from 120 to 150 centimeters. Here, she relies upon a universal motif representing a meeting with nature, finding elementary, harmonic, highly concise forms for it. For the children and parents who arrive at the daycare center every day, the flowers offer seating at three different heights—25, 35, and 45 centimeters—and at the same time inspire the kids to leap from stone to stone. Simultaneously, the rounded edges and various grains and polishes on the surfaces comprise a strongly haptic feature that invites touch. In turn, the green plates of the stems tempt people to follow their course, either walking or hopping.

Hensen’s artwork also creates a connection between the building’s interior and exterior, as well as between the daycare center and its environment. Growing from the inside to the outside, the Stone Flowers – Flower Stones are also symbolic of the children, who, over time, leave their protected space and begin to explore the world.