2004-6, Tim Altenhof

TIM ALTENHOF (Phd)

The vivid moments that will always remain firmly lodged in my memory are the ones from reviews at the Angewandte. Diploma presentations aside, her frequent studio reviews were most telling. There, every so often seemingly snoozing, at times ostentatiously absorbed into active text messaging, she was notorious for lulling her students into a false sense of security as presentations went on and on. In fact, no one was more perceptive than she was. If a design caught her attention–for good reasons and bad reasons–she would suddenly jump into the discussion, only to pierce through a project in the blink of an eye, anatomizing with just a few words what others were rambling on forever and ever while still failing to say what they wanted to say. Similarly, rumours had it that she would sometimes draw a few lines over a competition proposal that proved to be a tough nut to crack, as numerous people in her office were working on it for days and sometimes weeks, unable to resolve the scheme in any satisfying way. The three lines she drew usually fixed it within seconds. As Andreas Ruby put if a few days ago, “[s]he did not have to demonstrate how smart she was, because her intellect was based on that kind of unmistakable gut-feeling that you either have or don’t have.” Clearly, she had it. And she left way too early.