Secondary School in Stettbach (II)

This article is part of the Hidden Architecture Series “Tentative d’Épuisement” , where we explore the practice of an architectural criticism without rhetoric and based mainly on the physical experience of the work itself. Este artículo forma parte de la serie “Tentativa de Agotamiento” , comisariada por Hidden Architecture, donde exploramos la práctica de una crítica arquitectónica ausente de retórica y fundamentada sobre todo en la experiencia física de la propia obra. Hidden Architecture: Secondary School in Stettbach (I) The silence was split in two. The cheerful, but always unwelcome, tubular melody marked the passing of seven o'clock in the morning. Like every day for the past few weeks, the clock found her awake. Eyes wide open and gaze unconsciously lost somewhere overhead, chasing the retreating shadows around a nondescript lamp. There was nothing special about it, nothing interesting. Just its ordinary, functional nature, mass-produced by a large company to light millions of homes around the world. He had tried several times, a friend from university even brought a drill one day to his house; but the lamp still didn't fit properly to the plane of the ceiling and, slightly tilted, seemed to announce a crashing fall. Just like her life. Frida is already getting up and moving listlessly around her small flat. Her bare feet tap dryly, resignedly, on the muted linoleum floor. She thought she would love her job, that she was made to teach maths to little teenagers; but one by one she saw all the illusions with which she started her first course, five years ago now, fade away. She remembers it as if it were yesterday: she was so excited that warm August night that she didn't sleep a wink. Not even for ten minutes. But now, as she looks at herself in the mirror just before leaving the house, every day becomes unbearable.