Werner Düttmann on his 100th birthday Drawing for foxes and cross-country skiers

Being on residency right now, in the middle of the woods (yet in the middle of the city) is an odd experience. The fellows of the JUNGE AKADEMIE are living, on lockdown, at the Akademie der Künste at the Hansa Quarter, working downstairs in the atelier and sleeping in the bedroom above. “At times, it feels as if we might be the only people here”, say Jennifer O’ Donnell and Jonathan Janssens. 

In response to this, and in acknowledgment of what would have been the 100th birthday of the architect Werner Düttmann, who designed their temporary home, the architects decide to draw the spaces of the atelier, as well as their lives within it. In support of the practice of open studios, even in corona-times, they project the finished axonometric survey drawing onto the studio window, creating a 3m x 3m glowing box within which the drawing, now animated, draws and undraws itself, the active drawing signalling the act of drawing going on within. The installation lights only one window on the third floor of Werner Duttmann’s Blue Building at night, signalling to passers-by that the artists are, in fact, still here.