Respiration

How does one exhibit gardens or parks whose essence lies not in the finished product but in the process? The exhibition “Respiration,” which has already been on view for a year at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Berlin, offers one possible answer to this question. It showcases projects that atelier le balto has designed, planned, and implemented over the past 25 years. Instead of highlighting individual locations, the focus is on their elements: trees and flower beds, shadows, soils, and structures appear as surfaces, lines, and fleeting points, forming the grammar of the landscape. The boundaries of the projects blur; individual gardens and parks recede into the background, merging into a single, large-scale work. At the same time, the production process—the gardener’s craft and the tools of the trade—became directly visible as part of the exhibition through the transformation of the museum courtyard immediately adjacent to the Kulturforum in Berlin.

The exhibition “Respiration” sets out on a journey and changes location in order to develop under new conditions, just like plants with their diaspores—the small seeds, spores, and fruits. At the Architekturgalerie am Weißenhof, the exhibition will be re-staged as a performance on May 13, 2026, and will display images of the gardens in winter during the transitional month of May to reveal the reduced, clear form of the landscape design and the gardener’s intervention.

Opening: May 13, 2026, 7 p.m.

Closing: July 15, 2026, 4 p.m., galery talk with atelier le balto in cooperation with bdla