CHIMBORAZO (1998)
With a height of 6,319 m above sea level, the Chimborazo, was long regarded as the highest mountain in the world, before the discovery of the other giant peaks in Asia and America. If the height of mountains were to be measured from the centre of the earth, however, the Chimborazo would indeed be one of the tallest peaks on our planet in view of its situation near the equator.
From 1802 onwards, Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) repeatedly tried to conquer this mountain, and his famous essay "On an Attempt to Reach the Top of the Chimborazo" is one outcome of this.
"Things that seem to be inaccessible exercise a strange attraction," Humboldt wrote in this essay.
"One wants everyone to behold that at least an attempt is being made to achieve the unattainable."
In the "Chimborazo" project, the clear inner articulation and scale of the architecture help to create a cubic volume with an imaginary field of tension, at the centre of which the sculpture seems to float in the air. "Chimborazo" consists of two cones, one above the other and separated at their bases by a fluorescent disc.
The upper cone is an artistic interpretation of the volcano's conical form and contains extracts from the vegetation profile compiled by Alexander von Humboldt. The "pyramid of plants" entered here documents the typical vegetational forms for the various altitudes. Humboldt attributes the convergent development of the plant forms to the respective environmental conditions. He investigated the vertical zoning of the plant covering and the characteristic sequence of steps of the vegetation, from sea level to the high mountain peaks. Here, in a confined space, the relationship to temperature manifests itself far more succinctly than in the regular sequence of extensive horizontal zones of vegetation stretching from the equator to the poles.
The lower cone is a precise mathematical calculation of the map of the world in a conical projection.
CHIMBORAZO
Materials: paper, steel, copper, luminous pigment
Location: International Meeting Centre of the University of Leipzig, Werner Heisenberg House
Dimensions: 160 cm diameter; 400 cm high
Weight: approx. 160 kg
In collaboration with Tobias Wittenborn
Architects: BKLS, Munich