Hans Kollhoff

‘What would architecture be without the wall, probably man’s most important invention for creating an enclosure and a spatial conclusion, combining the functions of bearing, enclosing and opening? However much times change we still use the phrase “our own four walls’’ to define an existential centre which is still best pin-pointed by the idea of “dwelling’’: the starting point and also the destination of all our expeditions into the outside world. Our “own four walls’’ carry a mythical guarantee and at the same time define a first and elemental architectural condition: we enclose ourselves by consciously manufacturing a limited piece of space, detached from the general, unlimited space by artificial means and translated into a visible phenomenon.’

F. Neumeyer, ‘Head first through the wall: an approach to the non-word “facade’’’, in Hans Kollhoff, exh. cat., Berlin: Galerie Max Hetzler and Ernst & Sohn, 1995, p. 81