Since 2007, Vitra has invited renowned architecture and design studios to creatively stage the large storefront windows of its showroom on Gutleutstraße. For three weeks, drivers and pedestrians can watch the different installations unfold while they wait, quite literally, for the traffic light to turn green.
For this year's traffic-light cycle, dedicated to the theme of "Heimat" (homeland), Atelier Markgraph realised a wry, playful contribution in cooperation with us. Home is a paradoxical phenomenon: the moment you try to grasp it, the seemingly concrete place reveals itself as a construct of the imagination. What promises security is usually far away, both spatially and, much like early childhood impressions, in time. The HEIMATGENERATOR picks up on this process in the shop window, playfully (re-)generating notions of home.
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The Heimatgenerator
The apparatus resembles an oversized, surreal cuckoo clock — already something of a German cliché in itself. The clock was assembled from a collage of objects and images gathered beforehand through "field research," reflecting individual impressions of home.
Via a QR code displayed on a screen at the centre of the cuckoo clock, passers-by can wake the HEIMATGENERATOR from sleep mode and interactively feed it images of home from their smartphone, drawn from the provided pool. In response, it generates surprising combinations and personalised short-film montages that carry the same contradictory impulses as the theme itself: revelling in stereotypes of home while simultaneously reflecting on their origin.
Atelier Markgraph was responsible for the concept, design and realisation of the Heimatgenerator.
We took care of the interactive logic and programming, as well as the development of the mobile web app used to control the installation.
