Service Stations
Hitherto service stations were
anonymous and
arbitrarily exchangeable,
ugly,
cold,
forbidding,
sterile,
aggressive,
out of place everywhere, in rural and in urban areas.
Unfortunately they are usually situated where once the old "linden tree stood, at the well beyond the gate", to quote a famous song by Schubert.
As the main perpetrators of ecological and in particular visual environmental pollution, they have a gigantic task of compensation to fulfill: Territories are restored to nature which we have misappropriated for her most bitter foe, the automobile and its institutions.
Service stations now have a task to fulfill as vehicles of culture precisely where culture and beauty are disappearing; they should stand for a better, more just world in harmony with nature which man has been longing for all these years.
This service station is an oasis in the midst of the technological concrete desert.
A service station less aggressive than usual.
We need a medicine against the poison of the automobile.
Nowhere else is it more necessary to have green vegetation than on the roof of service stations.
This service station assumes responsibility;
It is a precursor of reparations as part of the peace treaty with nature.
Where else than on the roofs of service stations should vegetation grow?
Published in:
AZ, Vienna, June 18, 1990
Hundertwasser. New York: Parkstone Press International, 2008, p. 178