The House of Friction (Pumpwerk Heimat). From 18. y.

Christoph Büchel (*Basel 1966) realized one of his impressive walk-in room sculptures in the former water tower of the Lokremise St.Gallen in 2002. The work was created in connection with the then temporary exhibition The House of Friction with works from the Hauser & Wirth collection. The water tower itself was built in 1906 according to plans by Robert Maillard and is one of the pioneer buildings of reinforced concrete construction in Switzerland.



After the work was acquired by the canton of St.Gallen, Christoph Büchel restored and fundamentally expanded his installation The House of Friction (Pumpwerk Heimat) in the spring and summer of 2013. Visitors are to experience his work in an unbiased and direct way, which is why no description is given in advance. Visitors generate their own story as they explore the installation.



"The work is, so to speak, itself a text-producing machine, a meaning-generating pumping station through which the visitor flows." - Christoph Büchel



Büchel's installations, situated between real physical experience and memory image, are usually present only temporarily during temporary exhibitions. This installation is one of the few that is permanently accessible and often forms a physically and psychologically challenging course for visitors.


Curator: Roland Wäspe


Note: This text was translated by machine translation software and not by a human translator. It may contain translation errors.