"What was the best moment of your life?" ask Cologne based Pell Architekten in the introduction to their contribution to smow Cologne's forthcoming exhibition Waidblicke, "Has it been or is it still to come? OK, but along the way there's been good moments. Where were they?"
Where indeed....
Since October 2013 smow Cologne have been resident in the city's Waidmarkt - The Woad Market - a location that can trace its history back to the Roman occupation of the modern Colonia and which achieved a regional economic importance in the middle ages as the location for dealings in and with woad, a major source of blue colour for the textile producers of the period. Following the near complete destruction of the area by first allied bombers in the Second World War and subsequently by Cologne's city planners in the post war years, the area around the Waidmarkt has recently been redeveloped as a modern urban quarter: and from 2015 the Waidmarkt will once again be included in the annual Cologne Carnival route, a moment that will finally mark the area's return to the heart of Cologne.
In addition to establishing their home in the Waidmarkt Anett Ahlefeld and Guido Eichel from smow Cologne have also established within their showroom the so-called Cologne Living Room, a home from home featuring selected products from manufacturers such as Vitra or Nils Holger Moormann, and which in addition to offering a location for evening events also offers views across the Waidmarkt. Waidblicke so to say.
Or offered.
For from 9th - 31st October 2014 the windows of smow Cologne will be given over to local architects, students, landscape architects and their ilk with each participant being asked to produce an installation around the theme of Stadt-Land-schafft (A very clever German wordplay that can be understood as urban topography)
And so, for example, corporate architecture students from the Fachhochschule Köln under the supervision of Prof. Jochen Siegemund will create an art-light installation involving Charles and Ray Eames' 1951 DKR Wire Chair, communications agency dreiform aim to explore the action/reaction and dominance/inferiority relationships that for them typify the interplay between urban and rural environments while the aforementioned Pell Architekten will use the ubiquitous white plastic garden chair as the central character in their search for answers to questions such as, What is good? What is bad? What is attractive? What is tat? Or What was the best moment of your life?
Stadt-Land-schafft can be viewed at smow Cologne, Waidmarkt 11, 50676 Cologne from Thursday October 9th until Friday October 31st.
Full details can be found at www.waidblicke.de
