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When Sweden´s leading free daily METRO published a piece about the Great Pyramid in March, they asked their online readers to vote whether they would consider the Pyramid for themselves. We found the outcome quite impressive and made the screenshot above.
The Pyramid got a 52% Yes-response from Sweden. Sure, technically this is not a representative survey and the site didn´t say anything about the sample size, but since we received about 400 hits from Metro´s homepage, we guess 100% equals about a couple of dozens votes.
The Pyramid likes Sweden too..
Last Monday night culminated in these three numbers when Ingo and I presented the Great Pyramid project at Kunsthochschule Kassel (Kassel Art School) upon invitation of Oliver Vogt, chair in industrial design there. Oliver on his part invited Philipp Oswalt, professor of architectural theory at the school, to join us on the panel to discuss the Pyramid with the fifty-or-so visitors that evening.
I first gave a thirty minute presentation; Oliver, Philipp and Ingo then reflected on a couple of issues before the mic was opened to the audience to voice their own thoughts and questions. It went as usual: Most introduced their statements/ questions with „I really think the Pyramid is a very cool/practical/amazing idea, though there´s a few things I would like to ask/mention ..“ We like people asking questions and sharing their own ideas. Thoughts and questions help us to understand what the Pyramid project actually could mean, since we ourselves try not to narrow down the Pyramid to have too particular meanings. It will be what all of us make of it, it´s a platform. Thank you everybody who came; it´s been truly inspiring.
At the subsequent dinner, Philipp raised quite some doubts. As a thought-provoking investigation into media culture, the Great Pyramid would be just great - but will it really, really work, he was worrying? We were a bit worried too, recollecting his panel contributions we might not have been able to grasp entirely. It may be these years of shrinkage discussions that turned Philipp into something very unlike us: a professional sceptic. He was founding head of Shrinking Cities, an acclaimed and very thorough research and exhibition project that investigated challenges and prospects of population-wise rapidly diminishing regions in various parts of the Western world. It may be an inclination towards theoretical instead of hands-on practical investigation and analysis as well. It may be none of that.
What we liked a lot about Philipp, however, was his longer-term perspective on things that provided us with the slightly enigmatic numbers in this post´s header. Philipp challenged us and we gladly accepted his bet: a six-bottles case of champagne if the Pyramid would not contain 10,000 stones eight years from now.
We were briefly considering whether lustily sparkling champagne might not be a bit inadequate – but as Ai Weiwei has worded it as well as squarely in his TGP competition entry: „Celebrate death as part of live!“ So, we rest assured and look forward to seeing the arrival of six inconspicuous bottles of Philipp´s choice before May 2016.
What, if we ourselves could make a selection instead? Krug? Cristal? We guess, we would settle for modest Piper Heidsieck Cuvée Brut or no more than Taittinger Brut Réserve.. - As in: Granite? Marble? Thanks, but no thanks - plain concrete will do just nicely..
Thanks Hermann Gnaedinger for the somewhat ghostlike, year-2002-style cell phone photo above. From left: Jens Thiel, Ingo Niermann, Philipp Oswalt, Oliver Vogt
Looking forward to presenting the Great Pyramid in Kassel tomorrow (cf. the second last post), we remembered we have been already to this sleepy town in the heartland of Germany that only awakes once every five years when the global art caravan flies in for the documenta show.
Back in July 2007 arch+ invited us to introduce the Great Pyramid at their documenta 12 mini-marathon. It´s somewhat funny to see the video now. Unlike today, we weren´t absolutely sure yet how this thing would really work .. But in any case this wasn´t meant to be a business presentation but a reflection on what can be thought and done, what opportunities actually exist to re-think things radically..
Ingo Niermann, clumsy and smart as usual, talking to Hans Ulrich Obrist and Rem Koolhaas.
Pages from arch+ 186/187
Click the images to see the video or read the transcription from the most recent arch+ issue. Apologies to our readers who prefer English - it´s all in German.
Michiel van Raaij over at eikonographia.com quite extensively reflects on the Great Pyramid architecture contest submissions from Hirsch/Lorch/Miessen, Ai Weiwei/FAKE, Atelier Bow-Wow and MADA. Good thoughts you might want to read..
We will introduce the project at the Kassel Art Academy upon invitation of Oliver Vogt and Philipp Oswalt.
We had to take our video offline for technical reasons. Please refer to Fred Plassmann´s nicely shot and edited clip at architekturclips.de - it´s somewhat shorter but you´ll get a good idea of the presentation. In there also some uncredited stills from the Great Pyramid documentary that will be out in cinemas later this year.
For the files: A thousand individuals from about 50 countries have made an unbinding reservation for a stone in The Great Pyramid as of yesterday. This number is growing by one or two dozens a day at the time. Thank you all!
Much is written these days about Dessau and the Great Pyramid. Since the reopening of the Bauhaus a few years ago, the city was not in international news on that scale. Some say, the Great Pyramid will be built there, some other tell the story, the project is not supported by the city and others again are saying we initiators have turned away from Dessau. So, what´s the truth?
Our About-section tells, how we came to Dessau in the first place. The cultural heritage there is amazing. There is no other region in the world, where you would find three UNESCO World Cultural Heritages within a 20 km distance: The Bauhaus, the Dessau-Woerlitz Garden Realm and the Luther sites in nearby Wittenberg. We had used that argument a lot during the last months and not to our surprise, also Saxony-Anhalt´s Tourism Board finally realized its simple power. If you stroll through Berlin these days, you can hardly overlook a massive number of posters like this here.
The tagline says „ In Saxony-Anhalt we have more of these - 3 UNESCO World Heritage Sites within 18 km distance“. Funny, isn´t it?
So far we had talked to the Head Mayor of Dessau-Rosslau, Klemens Koschig, and a few people from the administration. They all were interested but no one would put the project on the political agenda. What made things not easier, was the verdict of the Streetz Ortschaftsrat (a minor legislative body below city level) in last August, that declined any interest to host the Great Pyramid in their borough. There, people had built single homes in a quiet, green environment and did not feel any urge to change a thing in their sleepy little town of 200 inhabitants.
But should Dessau and the whole region miss the chance to appear on the global agenda again, after they had made the couraguous decision to host the Bauhaus after it was expelled from Weimar in 1925? Shouldn´t they make it clear that the region is still open to renewal after Christian reformation was initiated by Martin Luther there, only 20 km away in Wittenberg back in 1517? Should the city council shy away from discussing the project, because an advisory board representing only 200 out of 90,000 inhabitants had hurriedly dismissed it even before any formal proposition was entered? We always thought the answers to these questions were quite obvious – and last Wednesday we were proved right.
After we had introduced the Great Pyramid project and the designs from the architectural competition, we first discussed the project´s opportunities on the panel and then invited the Dessauers to voice their thoughts and opinions. About 50 of them had come, a turnout our host Omar Akbar, the Dessau Bauhaus Foundation´s Executive Director, found remarkable.
It´s been good to talk. The local BILD tabloid had written the Great Pyramid up to an intimidating height of 600 meters, others had claimed we were a sect – everybody knew something, but not necessarily the true facts. To make a long story short: Representatives from major fractions of the city council in the end stood up and unambiguously stated, that Dessau should not let this unique chance pass. Since last Wednesday we have a political process in the city, that might finally bring new life to Dessau in case the city makes the winning bid in the Great Pyramid´s location tender over the next months.
Just providing political support and even land will nonetheless not be enough, the Great Pyramid will have to be built where customers want it. That might be Dessau in the end – or some place else in another country. At the Gala we showed a couple of charts, exemplifying some drawbacks we see in Dessau. Here is one, that will appear in the forthcoming Great Pyramid book out at Sternberg Press in May 2008.
PDF
We always liked Dessau, now finally Dessau starts to like the Great Pyramid. It´s been a good start for the current front-runner..
The Great Pyramid made it into the BBC World Service TV news. With due hesitation the BBC notes the fact that nothing is being built yet but luckily avoided the „German pyramid“ punch unlike in last September´s radio coverage. We´re making some headway it seems..
Here´s the article and there the video we´ve sacrificially shot Monday morning on this wind-swept field near Streetz where Tristana, the BBC Berlin correspondent, managed to find the by far saddest looking view of the small town for her moderation.
The Great Pyramid also made it on the frontpages of Dutch daily De Pers and Polish DZIENNIK, was featured in German major national daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung (not online), was on 3sat Kulturzeit once more and has been covered by German national public radio Deutschlandfunk (listen or download). Thinking of all the image requests from print media we´ve replied to, we guess there´ll be a bit more out very soon..
It´s been quite a night. Musical performances, presentations of previously unpublished aspects of The Great Pyramid and lots of interesting conversations at the aftershow. We know we could have done one or two things better but eventually everybody we talked to was most fascinated by the Gala event. It´s been an adequate closing of last years activities funded by the Federal Cultural Foundation of Germany. The Great Pyramid has finally evolved from a conceptual art project into a serious venture. We´re happy and also somewhat relieved that now everybody is convinced The Great Pyramid project will finally be implemented.
Before the show - The audience and a few TV teams
Presenting concepts for the Great Pyramid Park
Jury President Rem Koolhaas presenting the results of the architectural competition
The major news of the night were the submissions from our architectural competition and the announcement of an international location tender. The designs are being uploaded to the website, the location tender document will follow next week. Although some media still prefer to call it „the German pyramid“ we made it absolutely clear that the location is not yet defined. The Great Pyramid will need to be built in a place were it is welcomed by the region hosting it – but above all will have to follow the preferences of all the people who will make it part of their lifes and afterlifes. In simpler and more business-like terms: It will be built where it works for customers.
Thanks to Rem Koolhaas for coming to Berlin and presenting the competition results despite of an extremely tight schedule, to all the musicians, René for the zero budget stage decoration concept, Lars for implementing it, Christian von Werner for taking photos, Simon for filming the whole show and everybody at HAU for their most professional technical handling of the event.
For those who haven´t been able to attend the Gala we´ll make some simple, unedited video footage available later today or tomorrow.
