The Floating Rock: Tobin’s Kugelbrunnen

Kugelbrunnen by Christian Tobin. Photo: Augustina Zeya.

It seems as if people in Zurich enjoy standing in line almost as much as the English, who are world-famous for their queues. Be it for a trendy gelato spot, a flat-white-to-go from a hipstery espresso joint, pistachio chocolate gone viral, or for visiting a ludicrously expensive apartment that just happens to be a tad less ludicrously expensive than all the other ones. But waiting in line just to be able to touch a work of public art? And really only to enjoy the interaction with the art itself, that little dopamine kick only art can give? Without even snapping a selfie for a few likes on Instagram? A work of art that captivates even those children who, after five minutes in a museum, start chanting their sacred anthem of “this is boring, I want to go to the playground”?

Side note for context. At the Limmatplatz tram stop, north side, towards the Lettenbadi, a screen flickers eternally: 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, forever showing the same film. The work is Harun Farocki’s Transmission, a meditation on how people across the world touch monuments, relics, places of power — sites charged with memory — seeking to forge metaphysical bonds through their hands. And while the screen at Limmatplatz reflects on why we touch art, the artwork at the center of this essay lets us feel the answer in our hands.

At Zürihorn, by the lake, close to the famous Chinagarten and Jean Tinguely’s mechanical marvel Heureka, a circle of people stands around a glistening stone sphere. Everyone is waiting for their turn to touch it. Beneath it, water flows across a great block of granite. A boy, perhaps twelve, sets the sphere in motion

with a few small shoves, and it turns upon its axis as if released from weight, like a planet adrift in the void — yet here, tangible, upon this earth. A surreal fragment from another realm.

Kugelbrunnen by Christian Tobin. Photo: Augustina Zeya

The boy nudges it again, and its axis of rotation shifts slightly. When he steps away, a mother lifts her toddler onto the stone block; together their hands drift across the rolling globe. When they’ve had their fill, the next person is ready to take their place. By the measure of those waiting to interact with it, it may well be Zurich’s most beloved artwork under the open sky. Try nudging the sphere yourself and you’ll see — it seems to have a will of its own, a hidden strength. It’s far heavier than it looks. Give it a try!

On this sweltering summer day, the sphere is surprisingly cold — even while being exposed all day to the scorching sun. The water that englobes and cradles it, also keeps it chilled. No wonder people enjoy finding a bit of relief from the heat by touching it. In earlier times, the water flowed from the Tiefenbrunnen thermal spring, warm at twenty-five degrees. Back then, in winter, it must have had the exact opposite effect—serving as a source of warmth in the icy cold.

Christian Tobin (*1956, back then still known by his birth name, Mayer) created the Kugelbrunnen in 1984 for Zurich’s science fair Phänomena. Just a year earlier, he’d made his very first floating-sphere fountain for the Internationale Gartenbauausstellung in Munich. After Phänomena, the fountain went on tour for a few years, shown in several exhibitions, before being permanently installed at its current location in 1988, as a monument “zur Erinnerung an die Phänomena 1984”.

Who exactly invented the sphere fountain remains unclear. The American sculptor Kenneth Davis (1918–1992) had already made early prototypes in 1973, and in 1979 installed his Floating Stone (Pietra Galleggiante) on Piazza Gramsci in Carrara. Whether even earlier versions by other artists exist could not be confirmed during research for this text. But we can tell for sure that both Davis and Tobin have contributed to the worldwide success of this fountain design. Today, there are countless sphere fountains around the world. Sometimes elegant additions to a park, sometimes tourist magnets, like the black floating globe in Hannah’s Maze of Mirrors on Hollywood Boulevard.

What is certain, however, is that through its timeless charm, the Zurich sphere fountain will continue to fascinate and mesmerize us again and again, for many years to come.

Text by Jonas Lendenman

Address:

Near Chinagarten Zürich and Jean Tinguely’s Heureka sculpture, on the lakeside promenade at the eastern edge of Lake Zurich.

Commissioned by:

Originally by Phänomena Zürich, 1984. Permanent placement supported by Stadt Zürich

Notes:

This text was written in German and translated into English from its original version with the assistance of machine translation tools.