Transition

I wonder whether any plans were made for this peripheral space at the museum’s outer edge? Was a function envisioned for all the folds—the protrusions and recesses—in the outer walls? Who is the small flight of steps hidden away at the bottom of one of the massive sidewalls intended for? And where do the steps sunk into the grass at the rear of the building lead to? A few of the recesses have been secretly repurposed in a way that was surely not part of the original plan and is probably only tolerated: at night these niches provide the homeless with a little privacy and protection from the cold.

There must have been a plan for the adjoining green areas when the museum was first built. The greenery here transforms this liminal space into a decorative setting for the museum’s “actual” exhibits: the treasures displayed inside. But this plan has since been lost and forgotten, and no gardener has been employed to tend regularly to the burgeoning vegetation. Over the years, the planted shrubs and trees have intermingled with newcomers brought by the wind and the birds. Rather than becoming completely overgrown, however, these areas have given rise to an unusual community. Belonging to this heterogeneous community are also several members of the museum staff, some of whom occasionally make themselves comfortable on an old chair placed next to one of the outer walls; some have brought along “vegetal companions,” which they subsequently replanted. One of these companions is the potted palm that has found a new home in a wind-sheltered corner. Indeed, many different things come together in this transition zone: humans and nonhumans, garden culture and wild culture, the individual and the institutional.

If you follow the museums’ outer edges, you will encounter a solitary tree that is much older than the architecture: a so-called London plane—also known as a hybrid plane, since it’s a cross between a Platanus orientalis and a Platanus occidentalis. It has been a common feature in European cities since the seventeenth century, due in part to its strong resilience to pollution and rising temperatures. The crown of this imposing tree is the first thing I see when I walk up the steep flight of steps to the museum’s entrance, since it’s the tree (and not the entrance) that gives me a sense of orientation during my climb. And the plane tree is also my goal when I redescend the steps and continue my tour around the museum’s periphery. It suddenly appears in the middle of the path where the built structure draws back a little to make way. At this point, it is the institution itself that becomes a liminal space, leading me to something else, and this something else is a natural monument: a tree. The hybrid plane doesn’t form an absolute antithesis to the cultural space, however. It represents an overcoming of the culture/nature divide and therefore a kind of transition itself.

Text by Karin Krauthausen. Translation to English by Ben Carter.