2025

öffentlich zugänglich

Kinderhort Kreuzerweg 28, 81825 München

Tricoya Extreme MDF, KFZ-Lack, hochglanzlackiert, Objekt 1: 92 x 108 x 12 cm, Objekt 2: 161 x 144 x 7 cm, Objekt 3: 98 x 98 x 12 cm, Objekt 4: 75 x 90 x 17 cm, Objekt 5: 99 x 108 x 17 cm

Architecture: Baumschlager Hutter Partners

Landscape architecture: Roos Landschaftsarchitektur, München

Photos: Florian Holzherr

Text: Johannes Muggenthaler

The window-rich building faces the sheltered garden and playground. The daycare center is accessible from the street. This side of the building has no windows, and the reddish-brown painted wooden facade is largely covered with climbing plants. The children, the building’s principal users, see a fresh and novel structure that stands out from the surrounding apartment buildings as they approach the daycare center.

Carolina Kreusch has installed her artwork welcome to make the entrance more visible from a distance and create a friendly and hospitable atmosphere. One function of art in architecture is to make buildings more personal, distinct, and singular. People’s sense of belonging to such architectural structures is already established in the entrance area, where they look for their keys or are let in through an open door. This sense of connection and belonging helps people feel more connected and secure.

The artist’s colorful works possess all the qualities that make entering a safe and welcoming place like this center even more pleasing. Colors create a sense of belonging and help to personalize the building. Presumably, human color perception can only be compared to that of bees to a limited extent. Nonetheless, it is well known that bees recognize the entrance to their hives by the colors applied to them. They, too, want to feel a sense of belonging as they do not survive well on their own. In humans, the matter is possibly more subtle and complicated. Entry situations in buildings are often sad affairs; the idea of entering a hopefully better world is not made easy. One frequently wishes to get in and out quickly. The possibility of raising one’s head and seeing something beautiful is a hope in which few can indulge.

Carolina Kreusch’s colorful surfaces have landed on the building’s facade like friendly UFOs, as if by magic, in all the right places. The wooden objects consist of five different polyhedra. A polygon serves as the base for each one, and the three-dimensionality is created by shifting the perspective of these surfaces. Arranged in a protruding or recessed manner, they create a three-dimensional effect. Yet, these attractive flying objects seem to be tempted to reconsider. One wonders if they might fly up briefly like butterflies and then settle again in other, equally harmonious places. It is the apparent ease of the correct placement that makes us believe this deception. The works are both cheerful and elegant. They look like large flowers, and, in a magical place, they would have simply grown out of the green facade. They possess the attraction of the transient and yet the permanence of all-weather flowers. The children see them in all seasons as they approach the building, when the sun is shining, when the leaves are falling, or during snow flurries. The works are sure to be loved by the children and their adult caregivers. The artworks foster a sense of belonging and confidence on good days and provide comfort on difficult days.