In a stroke of genius, the Germans have decided to teach us all about the environment using a room full of bright green spaghetti. What makes this all the more remarkable is the fact that it is brought to us by the normally ‘solid but dull’ team at VW.
LEVEL GREEN is situated in VW’s Autostadt visitor attraction at their factory in Wolfsburg, Germany, this permanent exhibition is a successful collaboration between Berlin architects J Mayer H (responsible for the Brauner Wegner Priehn dental practice) and designers Art+Com (innovative installations at the BMW Museum).
The green interconnecting latticework running through the fabric of the structure is based on the three-arrowed PET recycling logo. This then appears to have been fed a liberal dose of growth hormone, resulting in the fluid membrane that houses sculptural and mechanical installations plus numerous digital displays.
The exhibition consists of six sections:
- Personal use
- Sustainability at Volkswagen
- The Three Aspects of sustainability
- Mobility of the future
- Sustainability and the Economy
- Effects of Climate Change.
Notable attractions include a giant digital footprint, increasing and decreasing in the floor below your feet in response to touch screen inputs to questions about your personal carbon emissions.
A collection of hanging art installations and mechanical displays deliver punctuation whilst the Sustainability and the Economy area houses a series of screens representing digital environmentalists as avatars. They converse with each other, reacting to visitors’ questions and add an extra human element.
The creative innovation and approach to environmental issues within LEVEL GREEN is genuinely refreshing. Let’s hope this filters down to Volkswagon’s vehicle range at some stage. The exterior of the Scirocco is at least a start, but I’d like to see more green spaghetti and less lumpy porridge please VW.