Eva Schlegel :
Fire Station in Probstdorf

The voluntary fire brigade and the Probstdorf cultural forum are located in what used to be the community center of Probstdorf, the outside of which has been simply and straightforwardly redesigned by Eva Schlegel. The fire-brigade building thus integrates itself into the town and at the same time allows a unique totality to emerge from the town setting that stands out for its clear design. The three components, i.e., base, façade and the lettering, were clearly delineated from another. Their self-dynamic is based on the fact that they are set off from the rest of the building through color and spatial definition. The only architectural change was that the base of the building was made to recede so as to let the snow-white façade produce a "floating pictorial body". In addition to the element of legible lettering, the artist introduced blurred text. Bright red letters painted with templates in Helvetica font, each measuring 35 cm: the capital letters convey official messages on the façade of the fire-brigade building, while capital and non-capital letters stand for the culture forum. The lettering extends over the surface of the whole exterior of the building with the legibility diminishing the higher up and the farther down one goes. Each of the middle lines has been attributed to two phases of text alienation resulting in blurred writing. The window zones and the entrance areas are dynamically structured and integrated in a clear-cut artistic conception in that the inscription has been incorporated as a fixed component.
(Renate Sikoronja)