Fixstern

“Fixstern” by artist Manuel Franke is a striking art-in-architecture installation from 2014. It is located in the Frillendorf district of Essen, where residential buildings stand extremely close to the eight-lane A40 highway. The artist has mounted a huge, colorful, undulating metal cladding on the facade of house No. 15. It extends from the front yard across the wall of the house. It echoes the industrial aesthetic of the highway guardrails and sound barriers. The metal panel covers parts of the house but precisely leaves out a single window. Through this rectangular opening, the residents can still look directly out onto the flow of traffic on the highway. This window serves as the visual anchor point of the entire structure—the so-called “fixed star.” The work was created as part of the large-scale regional art project “B1|A40 The Beauty of the Great Road,” directed by Markus Ambach.