Thursday afternoon 4 pm and we get an attractive offer: Duravit and Pier F invite us to join a 2-day excursion to the documenta 14 in Kassel and an interesting program. Spontaneously we decide we will join!
The next morning we take an early train from Stuttgart to Kassel. After arriving the perfectly organized program starts. The first guided tour goes to the UNESCO world heritage Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe. The view from the park over the city is amazing. As the last time we really like Kassel in its very own way.
Sustainable Architecture
The same afternoon we listen a lecture by Gerhard Greiner from the architectural office HHS who deal in their work with sustainable constructions and future-oriented solutions. One of the office founder, Prof. Hegger, also was a co-founder of the DGNB. The lecture takes place at SMA Solar Technology. Here you can experience sustainable approaches in real life when energy-plus-houses are used as company buildings. The Global Operations Corporate Sustainability Manager Matthias Schäpers talks about their experiences and challenges.
Afterwards we visit the Centre for environment-conscious construction (Zentrum für umweltbewusstes Bauen ZUB) before we arrive in a nice hotel where we spend the dinner and the night.
The world’s biggest art fair
The next morning we go to the documenta. The first undeniable art work: The Panthenon of Banned Books by Marta Minujín. 67.000 books there where somehow forbitten are presented. The same art work was also presented in Athen. This year the documenta 14 takes place in Athens overlapping the exhibition in Kassel. The title LEARNING FROM ATHENS.
The first guided tour is over the outside area and the city centre highlights of Kassel. We end up on the roof terrace of the Grimm Museum built by Kade Wittfeldt and we like the outview the same way as we like the architecture itself.
Slowly the city centre fill up. It’s the second last weekend of the documenta and within short time there are 200 m queues in front of the almost 40 exhibitions. Thanks to our booked tour we can pass by all waiting people. In the Neue Galerie and Palais Bellevue we get an impresseion about the very intellectural exhibition objects. Without further explanations and details it’s very hard to understand the meaning of most of the art works.
In five years we will go to the next documenta and we decided to come to Kassel before – to visit its museums and the beautiful city itself.
