Marabou

History of the work

On the green space between the apartment blocks at Waldmannstrasse 53 and 67 in the Tscharnergut estate, by the playground and opposite the sledging hill, stands an open cube of concrete. René Ramp built it in 1984. It is titled “Marabut” and is also known as the Willy Liechti Memorial Fountain; who Willy Liechti was could not be established from the sources consulted. According to Wikidata, the structure is about 2.65 metres wide and 3.20 metres high; it belongs to the city and is looked after by Stadtgrün Bern.

Wikipedia describes the “Marabut” as a walk-in play cube in which the basic forms of circle, square and triangle interpenetrate. When the water is running, curtains of water are meant to separate the inside from the outside like transparent walls. Anyone who steps inside, according to this description, stands between curtains of water.

René Paul Ramp was born in Bern in 1941 and died in Köniz in 2004. The Swiss art lexicon SIKART presents him as a draughtsman, architect, painter, sculptor and environmental designer; his fields included art in architecture and in public space, kinetic art, drawing and ceramics. A cube you can enter combines both professions, as it were: it is a sculpture and a small building at the same time.

The setting suits it. The Tscharnergut estate was built between 1958 and 1965 on land the city had bought in 1948/49; it comprises 1168 flats in tower blocks, slab blocks, low-rise blocks and terraced houses. Because through traffic is kept out, there is a network of paths in between, large green spaces and playgrounds which, according to the building inventory, were to make the estate pleasant to live in. Just a few steps away, south of no. 53, stands the iron sculpture “Gemeinschaft” by Marguerite Saegesser-Rüfenacht from 1968.

Researched and summarised by Bärn Kit. Sources: Kultur Stadt Bern, Kunst im öffentlichen Raum (offene Daten) · Wikipedia (de): René Ramp · SIKART: René Ramp · Wikidata: Marabut (Q55482767) · Wikimedia Commons: Willy-Liechti-Gedächnisbrunnen (Marabut – René Ramp 1984) · Bauinventar Stadt Bern: Baugruppe Tscharnergut · Bauinventar Stadt Bern: Waldmannstrasse 25, 39, 53, 67