Tangible Poetry of the City
The Air Museum Amberg presents "Nine Cities from the Air" by Nina Wilsmann
Nina Simone Wilsmann was born in 1978 in Wasserburg am Inn. There, in the picturesque town of twelve thousand inhabitants, which lies on a peninsula in a river bend, she stayed the longest: until graduation. After that, however, her life became restless. She first moved to Munich to study art history. But that quickly became too gray for her, as she wanted to engage with images not just theoretically. She wanted to be creative herself!
Thus, she switched to communication design and chose Augsburg as her study base, moving within the city at least seven times—and even once to Catalonia. At each of her new locations, she relied on the usual tools, whether city maps or Google Maps. Soon, however, the interchangeability of the designs became a thorn in her side. Even vibrant and interesting cities like Barcelona seem incredibly boring and monotonous when viewed solely through a map.
CORE THEME
Wilhelm Koch became aware of the designer's art online: the head of the Air Museum is always on the lookout for artists connected to air, his core theme. In the case of Nina Wilsmann’s city maps, it’s primarily the bird’s-eye view that caught his interest. In this specific case, however, there is also the graphic element, the colorfulness, and the playful nature that immediately enchants visitors at the Air Museum: Nina Wilsmann relies on well-known composition patterns from pop art, using pictograms and symbols, colors and shapes, mixing the abstract with the concrete, thus breathing life into her city images.
Suddenly, the Paris in her map starts to smell of candies, lavender, and peppermint, along with the gravel in the Jardin du Luxembourg and the steel of the Eiffel Tower. In her map of Vienna, her current home (but only during the week—she now lives in Budapest on weekends!), the viewer believes they can hear how every Viennese carries the Prater in their heart, filled with tightrope walkers, king tigers, and hoop divers. And her Hamburg, yes, her Hamburg invites sailing with its small armada of boats on the Binnenalster.
Nina Wilsmann’s city maps are a feast for the eyes and nourishment for the brain, small wish-generating machines and levers that lift the fog of our memories. It’s a fantastic graphic that releases moments of imagination and makes the poetry of cities tangible, starting from the well-known and familiar. It feels like a déjà vu from a children’s book illustration from the 1960s, yet is highly original and completely unique.
TOP DESIGN AWARDS
Wilhelm Koch is known to be a creative powerhouse, always brewing new ideas behind his mischievous smile. Together with Argentine architectural draftsman Pablo de la Riestra, he has achieved great things for Amberg over the years. Through the city marketing association and the Lüdecke company, he has found patrons who helped highlight Amberg’s architectural jewels, preserving the city’s historical dignity and gravity.
The Upper Bavarian, based in Vienna and Budapest and awarded top design prizes (winner of "100 Best Posters," silver award at the Joseph Binder Award, and nominee for the German Design Award), exemplifies through her exhibition how Amberg could be enriched with a contemporary portrait.
Text by Peter Geiger