I love community art

My company's headquarters is Basel, Switzerland, where the campus sprawls over several city blocks of post-modern architecture and new construction. The long history of Swiss neutrality has a lot to do with a streak of fierce independence that is apparently manifesting itself in a love of 1964 design from the amount of colored glass and massive concrete and steel girdered-retro look of the new buildings. Either that, or it's a communal backlash against too many years of any thing 'French Country' or 'Shabby Chic' being mongered as civilization's ultimate decor. In which case, I kind of see their point.

My favorite part of campus is the under-street tunnel which joins the two halves otherwise separated by a busy thoroughfare. Some years ago, someone brought in a number of school children to paint a mural on the walls of the tunnel. Apparently trying to create a health-care 'motif' for the tunnel (we are a life sciences company, after all), they asked the children to illustrate various interpretations of the digestive system.

This resulted in what I lovingly refer to as the "poop mural"

Notice how the chicken poop magically turns to eggs at some point in this one.

I would have tried to capture them all, but my colleagues walking past were beginning to look at me funny for taking picture of the tunnel.