Bergstadt (2009) by Isa Melsheimer (1968, Neuss, Germany) presents an evocative landscape of a strange and ambiguous universe. Fabricated from broken bottles, the work highlights the dual nature of its material. Sharp and potentially dangerous, the shards of glass form a compact mass, while their green hues and reflections lend the piece a sense of fluidity and fragility. The sculpture appears governed by opposing forces, structurally chaotic yet shaped by an underlying order. Architecture plays a central role in the Melsheimer’s practice, particularly the forms and ideologies of modernism. She is as concerned with architectural structures as with the social and political visions that sustain them. At once a mountain and a city, as the title suggests, Bergstadt evokes the utopian architectures imagined in the early 20th century Germany, when glass was embraced as a material of idealism, symbolising transparency. Bruno Taut (1880–1938) who, in the aftermath of World War I, envisioned crystalline cathedrals suspended from mountain- tops in his 1918 portfolio Alpine Architektur.

Plywood Palace and this group of gouaches was created in 2011, for an exhibition at Mudam. They play homage to the work of architect Ieoh Ming Pei (1917–2019) and specifically celebrate his projects for the East Wing of the National Gallery in Washington, DC (Gouache no. 281, 1978), the helical staircase in the Mudam (Gouache no. 282, 2006) and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art in Ithaca, New York (Gouache no. 284, 1973). Other details, such as the grey crane (a symbol of longevity and wisdom in ancient China) and the hyperboloid forms made with silver-plated wire (which appear to take flight like a crane) provide additional references to Pei and his work, in particular the (unrealised) Hyperboloid Tower for New York designed in 1956. The installation Plywood Palace takes the form of the Hancock Tower (1976) in Boston, Massachusetts, designed by Henry N. Cobb of the firm I.M Pei & Partners. The building was renamed the Plywood Palace after its glass walls were knocked out by a strong wind and replaced by plywood.