Guido Zimmermann

"Cuckoo Blocks" are Zimmermann's answer to the traditional cuckoo clocks from the Black Forest. They show a contemporary take on urban living and interesting architecture. The shell is new, but the soul, a clockwork with cuckoo, is still the old one. Two aspects have a special meaning here: buildings with a striking history and architectural value, and housing in social hotspots. Both have a connection through the blocky, massive concrete construction. The classic cuckoo clock stands for the prosperity of the middle class and counts as a kind of luxury item for the staid home. The updated version as a prefabricated building shows today's urban and social life in apartment blocks. The second aspect of the "Cuckoo Blocks" is no less interesting. For example, Ernő Goldfinger's "Glenkerry House", built in the eye-catching style of Brutalism, was once accommodation for the average citizen. Today it offers the "hip" and hardly affordable housing in London. The hotel "La Flaine" by the Bauhaus architect Marcel Breuer, shows a beautiful architecture, but is a building sin, as this huge hotel complex is located in the middle of the French Alps... Zimmermann has expanded the series of cuckoo clocks with nesting boxes for native songbirds. The prototype, a model of a social building from Catania/Sicily, was quickly inhabited by a pair of titmice. The three normal nesting boxes next door, however, remained uninhabited. Perhaps it was the small