NONSPHERE XIV

Permanent installation for the Artandarchitecture program by District at Malzfabrik, Berlin. 2014

The enclosed staircases of the Malzfabrik annex building enjoy morning sunlight coming through their eastern-exposed windows. The series work Nonspheres XIV aims to transform this often bleak, uninhabited vertical space as one that contrasts human and natural time, reminding the seeming fractures of the temporal scales of the human and the biological.

It is the space within the staircase, the one enveloped by an ordinary torqueing handrail, that is filled with hanging steel frames and cables as a trellis representing a 4th dimensional polytope, a tesseract. The trellis hovers inside the crisscrossing staircases. This vertical, transitional, interstitial space is for those in the building whom might, from time to time, want to enjoy the growth of the plants and the shadowplay of the tesseracts casted by the reflected sunshine, while either sitting on the steps, smoking, drinking morning coffee, or in motion, going from one floor to the other. The trellis will be crawling with plants (Blackeyed Susan, Ipomea, Canarian Ivy) that grow from above, hanging to the ground, and from below, climbing to the top. The frames will also connect to the staircase railing, so that the plants may also inhabit the railing itself, interrupting, if invading human space.

Curated by Susa Husse, Berlin, 2014
Concept: Luis Berríos-Negrón
Production: Paramodular
Production Designer: Miguel Prados Sánchez
Production Assistant: Jacob Schnuck