Photos by Balthazar Wyss
Artwork by Yannick Meusel
2017-2024 on the edge
Borderlines are fascinating. In theory, the limit can be approached but never reached. In practice, the borders are hardly discernible, always shifting and partly permeable. Staying on the edge requires a good balance. The Mudhole was a place that really stood skillfully on all edges. On the edge of the border between Switzerland and Germany. On the edge of a hill. On the edge between skate spot and landscape architecture. On the edge of legality. The kind of place that raises tales on the edge between myth and history.
It starts with some blurred and intriguing stories snatched from a friend’s talk. “These guys built a bowl, it’s in the garden of an estate that was built at the German border during the second world war without a construction license and that’s been left half-built since then”. There are assumptions about the reasons why such a building would be erected without permit during war time, but it may be out of our scope.
It’s already enough to give it a try. Once past the gate, one would at first be stunned by the garden. Peter, mostly responsible for building the bowl, is a gardener. Carefully chosen plants, perfectly messy as in a British landscape garden, a pond with fishes, a collection of home-grown bonsais. In the back of the garden stands a kind of a half-wooden-half-concrete shack, and behind it a steep wooded hill.
But wait, where the heck could there be a bowl around here?
Follow the white rabbit, enter the shack that looks like a crazy maze, unexpectedly meet Thomas, a two-meter tall guy often sitting in the cellar cooling down and waiting for nothing, pass through Peter’s workshop (he’s pouring his own pool copings and pressing his own decks) and stand amazed behind the building, looking up at the hill.
There, one would witness the 50cm wide and 2m high concrete pillars that support a massive timber framework. Part of the wooden beams were stolen on a construction site and used to be part of a bridge’s structure. From there the whole thing looks like something between a fortress and a kid’s dream tree house. Climbing up the wooden steps, passing by a warning sign, being welcomed by the dark drawings of the artist Yannick Meusel.
A few steps further and there it is. Right before the eyes it’s becoming believable. High trees and vegetation walls make it feel like a cathedral’s nave. Peter is carefully sweeping the bowl, Alice is setting up the speakers and the playlist for the session. It’s a U-shape bowl. One side and two corners are topped with Peter’s handmade pool copings. There’s an extension with a tourist trap, the transition is steep, and the corners are narrow.
It takes time to learn how to skate it. There’s no way to be more than five to skate at a time. And through each session some peeps from the other side of Switzerland or Germany show up, some stopping by on a journey, some just spending three hours travelling for a one-evening session before driving back home.
Well, this is in the past now. The municipal authorities found out the bowl and decided it shall be demolished. Part of the concrete structure may remain because it’s consolidating the hill, though. That’s already something the municipality won’t have to pay for. So, time to thank and praise all the people who diligently moved these tons of concrete and wood and who so cordially kept it alive: Peter, Theo, Thomas, Alice, Nico, Kevin, Elia, Elvin, Max, Leon and Andy Roy of course. Biggest bummer (as I heard from Peter the Gardener himself) is that after seven years, the bowl finally looked like it has been ever since standing there.
Check out the article on Mudhole DIY from 2020 here.