Fenster
Permanent installation
Clinic Hirslanden
Zurich, 2013
The hospital corridor is compared to a cave: long, «windowless» spaces and at the same time places of ritual, recovery, miracle. This comparison creates a parallel between the project «Fenster», Window(s), and cave paintings.
The corridor walls are standardized plasterboard. They are used raw, papered or painted white - serving as a design element to rhythmically restructure the functional, repetitive corridor. Just as the cave painter found his colours in the materials of his environment, here the coloured plates are made out of used plastic - colours of our everyday life. The networks of lines engraved into this colour layer are not definite patterns, but rather presences in space; like a bird’s-eye view of landscapes, a glimpse of microcosms, traces, stories...
The coloured plastic-coated plasterboard plates were made by Onzgi in India in collaboration with Conserve, an organisation that ensures that slum dwellers who clear litter off the streets get fair working conditions, and with the profits build, among other things, schools and health clinics.
