Von Manuela Hötzl.
Von Manuela Hötzl.
A wonder is a mystery, a phenomenon that essentially lies beyond our reason or understanding. It also contains something invisible which is generally positive. People bow before a wonder and acknowledge their ignorance. A wonder is not something visionary, not utopian; a wonder is amazement at a possible reality that lies beyond our momentary powers of imagination. It is only when we are prepared to wonder that we reach insights lying far beyond our familiar range of experience, and it is also only then that the assertion, "everything that can be imagined is feasible“ made by Funder GesmbH in the preface to the catalogue "Wonderland", becomes valid.
The exhibition "Wonderland“ refers to what is feasible in architecture that perhaps still contains something wondrous. Having opened in St Veit an der Glan with eleven teams of young architect the exhibition is now travelling through nine European countries in each of which a further team will be added. The stations Bratislava and Prague have already been visited, with the next destination Berlin the exhibition heads in the direction of Western Europe.
The exhibition concept, for which there was no curator, gives every new young team of architects in each country visited panels measuring about one square metre. The exhibition thus allows itself to grow, although apparently this not was planned from the beginning, and develops into a vast pixel landscape of architecture. The small thin-stemmed panels that grow rampantly like colourful architecture plants can be flexibly compiled and augmented. The projects blend and overflow into each other as a result of their sheer numbers. The result is a "Wonderland of European Architecture" whose specific quality is that it represents a communal, networked architecture scene extending throughout Europe: a "European architectural sociotope."
The differences disappear as a result of the amount of information panels. The boundaries of the projects become blurred, as do their regional characteristics. It is left up to the individual visitors to discover for themselves the differences and things in common. Without a curator the exhibition exposes itself to outside manipulation that takes effect in different ways in each country.
After Amsterdam, Paris, Venice, Zagreb and Ljubljana the exhibition will return to Carinthia in 2006. With ninety-nine architects in Wonderland a colourful world of architecture representing a strongly ramified network of young architects will be presented to the visitors, as well as a self-organized, self-grown and small, but precious databank.