Platform Wiesencafé - Laboratory for cooperation, research and inclusion from within
Young people acted as the source of ideas. They were and are still involved in all phases of the planning process, together with experts. This also applies to the conception of the architecture, the construction of furniture and the ground plate of the future café. Since 2017 the ground plate is used as a public space, a place social encounters and exchange of constructive ideas for the city. Contemporary art provides the method, the participants give their ideas and expertise. Everyone wins.
Cross-border/international
Germany
Other
The activity and use are mostly of local dimension, the actors are national and international in origin and reach. The impact and the objectives are transboundary and international. The project involves international artists and researchers.
{Empty}
City of Düsseldorf,
District council 10 (Düsseldorf-Garath)
Ministry for Home Affairs, Municipal Affairs, Building and Equality of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia
Ministry of the Environment Brandenburg, East Germany
Local advisory council Nebelin, region Prignitz, Brandenburg, eastern Germany
It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
No
No
Yes
As a representative of an organization, in partnership with other organisations
Name of the organisation(s): Zentrum für Peripherie Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Ute Last name of representative: Reeh Gender: Female Nationality: Germany Function: Idea, conception, project management Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Himmelgeister Straße 107 F Town: Düsseldorf Postal code: 40225 Country: Germany Direct Tel:+49 211 312954 E-mail:ur2@ute-reeh.de Website:https://zentrum-fuer-peripherie.org/en/
Name of the organisation(s): Alfred-Herrhausen-Schule Type of organisation: School for special needs (learning, social and emotional development) First name of representative: Peter Last name of representative: Zerfaß Gender: Male Nationality: Germany Function: Head teacher Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Carl-Friedrich-Goerdeler-Str. 21 Town: Düsseldorf-Garath Postal code: 40595 Country: Germany Direct Tel:+49 211 702799 E-mail:peter.zerfass@schule.duesseldorf.de Website:https://www.alfredherrhausenschule.de
Name of the organisation(s): University of Applied Sciences Peter Behrens School of Arts Type of organisation: University or another research institution First name of representative: Judith Last name of representative: Reitz Gender: Female Nationality: Germany Function: Dean Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Münsterstraße 156, Building 6 Town: Düsseldorf Postal code: 40476 Country: Germany Direct Tel:+49 211 43513033 E-mail:judith.reitz@hs-duesseldorf.de Website:https://pbsa.hs-duesseldorf.de
Name of the organisation(s): Düsseldorf municipal housing company Type of organisation: municipal company First name of representative: Klaus Last name of representative: Feldhaus Gender: Male Nationality: Germany Function: Executive management Board Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Erna-Eckstein-Straße 6 Town: Düsseldorf Postal code: 40036 Country: Germany Direct Tel:+49 211 8904100 E-mail:klaus.feldhaus@swd-duesseldorf.de Website:https://www.swd-duesseldorf.de/startseite.html
Name of the organisation(s): Baukultur NRW Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Peter Last name of representative: Köddermann Gender: Male Nationality: Germany Function: Executive Board Programme Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Leithestraße 33 Town: Gelsenkirchen Postal code: 45886 Country: Germany Direct Tel:+49 209 40244112 E-mail:p.koeddermann@baukultur.nrw Website:https://baukultur.nrw
Name of the organisation(s): Chamber of Architects North Rhine-Westphalia Type of organisation: Representation of architects, interior architects, landscape architects and urban planners in NRW First name of representative: Ernst Last name of representative: Uhing Gender: Male Nationality: Germany Function: Chairman Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Zollhof 1 Town: Düsseldorf Postal code: 40221 Country: Germany Direct Tel:+49 211 49670 E-mail:info@aknw.de Website:https://www.aknw.de/
The Wittenberger Weg neighbourhood is located in a triangle between a speedway and a high-speed railway line, an autobahn and an industrial area, thus physically and socially isolated from the rest of the city.
The project is based on the experience of pupils of the Alfred Herrhausen School with the construction of a huge and complex terrace they devised, planned and partially built themselves. It fulfils the function of an open air auditorium and was awarded the Schulbaupreis NRW 2013 for its development process and architecture. With the resulting self-confidence, the young people realised the lack of a self-designed, common centre in thier neighbourhood: a café, an open space that would be a meeting place, including for people “from the outside”.
With this idea as starting point, a long process began. At the core of the project stands the idea of multiple authorship. Besides children, their families, other local residents, neighbouring businesses, as well as artists, students and teachers from universities, craftsmen, and employees of the municipal housing company, all participate in the project. The perspective of others helps to see the own abilities more clearly and self-confident.
Together with the kids and the students, the plans and ideas were translated into a buildable and special architecture. Children, young people and students lent a hand themselves. Both sides benefit from this way of working. The courage of the children inspired both students and the involved specialists. The collaborative work includes – besides planning – the construction of furniture, the design of tableware and erection of the ground plate in 2017. The remarkable quality of the things which emerged in that cooperation would not have been accomplished through usual planning processes.
Since 2017, the platform has been a meeting place, a place for inventing, experimenting, realising, exchanging ideas for the neighbourhood, for the city and our future.
Courage
Wholeheartedness
Actually
Mutuality
Beauty
With the Wiesencafé, we began to show that people’s longings can contribute to the creation of a common place. After we found the unusual form, we looked for a durable building material that supports biodiversity and that allows to work with youths, students, craftsmen and other experts. Specifically, we decided to look for an earthen construction method that is erosion-resistant without a roof overhang, one that allows self-made construction with many people and that is up to today’s requirements.
We chose an ancient, nearly forgotten technique for which we could use the loamy soil on site.
“Wellerlehm“ (=cob), which was displaced by concrete in the 20th century, can be shaped into any form. It is self-supporting and erosion-resistant without plaster. Cob only requires excavated loamy soil and straw as material. Loam is the binder. Straw takes on the function of reinforcement and by binding carbon reduces CO2 emissions. Cob can be fully recycled by levelling on site or by reuse for the next building project. Buildings with solid earth walls, such as cob, stand out in terms of moisture and heat regulation and their pleasant indoor climate. The outer surface of the wall offers living space for protected solitary living wild bees.
In 2015, with the construction of a loam bench, we tested the material and the cooperative building method. It was built together by children from kindergarten age upwards, students and a loam builder from eastern Germany.
“Cob is the building material of the future.” said Reiner Nagel, a cooperation partner of our research project on cob technology in 2020.
The Wiesencafé would become Europe‘s first building featuring a modernized cob technology and thus an ecological lighthouse project in 2024.
New things take time. In 2017, we built the concrete base as usable public space. Its floor is enclosed by an over 50 metres long plinth, since then daily used as bench, as meeting place. The base plate has inspired a new name "The Stage"
Very often in society, huge potentials of human skills are wasted. This project shows that specifically with the help of individuals whom no one trusts to be capable of ideas, vision, thoroughness, beautiful, unconventional and innovative solutions can be found which transcend the local purpose. This project shows: self-efficacy leads to social togetherness.
The jointly found vision is the key to the project. This is not easy, because standardisation in our society causes us to stick to clichés, known formulas. But often they are worthless, because they only confirm what already exists.
The power lies in cautiously breaking new ground. The first step in the process is to choose a language enabling to present still vague conceptions. An example allows to explain why in our project the results are impressively accurate and beautiful in every detail. In our search for a suitable building site, we decided to use a small meadow next to the road, opposite the bus stop. In order to determine how large the intended building should be, we formed kind of a model of the outer walls with our bodies standing on the meadow. Everyone of the group could influence the total size and form by modifying their distance to the others. We rehearsed until everyone was satisfied. The size and the special basic shape of the future café building were decided on the spot with our bodies, actually the basic measure unit for a building. The decision was so unequivocal that it outlasted all later discussions using the very clear argument: „We want this shape because it is inviting, because no one is standing in the corner, because the space is right.“
To this day, every artist, politician, architect and city planner is impressed by that form and its position in space. The chairwoman of the housing company supervisory board, Antonia Frey said, "I always feel at home here". The head of the cultural office Mrs. Schirge: "It is one of the most successful places in Düsseldorf's public space".
Social systems seem to function well unless there appear disturbances. These tend to be ignored until they become obvious in the form of crises. Looking at the whole, you realise that they’re caused by overlooked or ignored coherences.
We need to consider all perspectives. The platform is an example for that.
In the beginning, there was shame about being from this neighbourhood, fear to be classed as antisocial, to not be appreciated with one's own culture, or to not be noticed. In the first two years of the project, children from the school didn’t like coming to Wittenberger Weg. But meanwhile it has become something to look forward to. The key to this change in attitude is that even something invented, something thought up has visible value.
Laura, one of the ‘idea generators’, explained: "The art reflects the child.” It makes visible what is possible. The physical form of the result reflects the abstract form of the process of its creation. As an example may serve the construction of the loam bench mentioned above.
One school class designed its shape with great care. Also involved in the construction were a carpenter, a youth who had been released from prison the day before, an adobe builder from Wittenberge, the city after which the Wittenberger Weg is named, architecture and art students, and a kindergarten group from the neighbourhood. In one day the bench was finished. With the remaining straw we formed straw figures and put them on the bench. During the day, many people came by. Everyone suspected that the whole thing would be destroyed the next day: "Everything gets broken here." During the next weeks I drove past there more often – nothing had happened. The straw dolls had just changed their positions and postures.
One of the former kindergarten children from then is currently working in the project. He is 13, a sensitive boy from the neighbourhood. For him, the Wiesencafé has to do with the fact that it is possible to build something beautiful.
Beneficiaries of the project are the neighbourhood, the city and it's educational and research institutions, but also vice versa. The children, young people and the students benefit most.
Since 2014, the Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences with its Department of Architecture uses the Wiesencafé as 1:1 laboratory with methods in which we are European pioneers.
This way the students benefit from the refreshingly new ideas and the collaboration with the children, whereas the children gain knowledge, experience, work-related social skills, and not least recognition and self-esteem.
Inhabitants of Düsseldorf interested in art benefit just as much as the residents of the neighbourhood from the artists involved in the project. Since 2018, one thread of the project is the stipend „Artists in Wittenberger Weg“. This led to situations like 2022, as children and students worked together with a curator from the Kunstsammlung NRW and the Israeli performance artist Adina Bar-On, who in turn have been impressed by this encounter.
In 2018, Ute Reeh was chatting with some women from the settlement in the early autumn sun. They were standing next to the hazelnut tree under which the artist Jan Philip Scheibe sung a song at the end of his residency. One of the women said, "You know, it's actually nice here!" And then she turned to Ute and continued in a lowered tone, "They call us plebs, but that's not true at all."
It is a concern of the project to show the potential of contemporary art, to make systems and contexts visible and thus modifiable.
Since 2019, it has emerged an ample research project on the building material cob, which got the impulse from the Wiesencafé. It contains significant innovations that have led to collaboration with leading pioneers and research institutions, profiting of the creative approach.
Besides all that, everyone benefits from the various encounters, like from lunching together on the platform, as if there were no social boundaries.
The project started in 2013 with three youths from the neighbourhood who at that time were already familiar with the method. The basic idea came from them. Afterwards, a school class joined, which also included children from the neighbourhood. The children talked and interviewed the people on Wittenberger Weg and the neighbouring factories. Then a seminar with students from the PBSA and their professor joined them. Working in partnership they developed designs, initially for two different areas. For both variants, the café was built as a real-sized model using roof battens and foil, and operated for one day. Thus everyone – residents, administration, politicians, experts – was involved in the discussion and got a good idea of the goal. The "Offene Tür" (a local social institution), the Düsseldorf housing company SWD, politicians from all parties, the administration of the city district, and Baukultur NRW all joined in. Later in time followed, the decision for the location, the exact planning of all details, sessions of test cooking to check whether the sizes and details in the model fit and whether people liked what the kids served them. The therefrom resulting model was presented to all participants on 10th December 2014. This is where the NRW Ministry of Construction came in.
In 2015, we started researching cob. The architectural office of the dean of the university prepared the building application based on all the preliminary work. In 2016, the cob expert Christian Hansel joined the project. In 2017 we moved the "Baustelle Wiesencafé" to the museum K21. All the children of the city and their parents were invited. In 2018, groups from all other types of schools joined the project. In 2019, young people from Wittenberger Weg were involved in the first test with cob. The Zentrum für Peripherie initiated an international research project. Loam builder Martin Rauch and the other top research partners are aware where the results flow back to.
In the project, the competences of children with their precise observations and ideas are essential.
Artists have the choreography of the processes and the form of the emerging products, shapes, objects, planning, structures in mind and in view. They take few, but fundamental decisions which are coordinated with all actors.
Two such impulses may be mentioned here as examples:
1) The idea and initiative to consider cob as a material for the building, to compact the cob mass and to initiate research in that direction at a time when it was not yet foreseeable to how relevant innovation this would lead to.
2) The idea to realize the floor slab as usable sculpture and open space in 2017. This decision made visible the quality of the open space, both in a concrete and a figurative sense. And it allowed us to continue the project in open air during the pandemic period.
People of different professional areas and disciplines are involved:
- Students of architecture following and working with the children's ideas experience challenges and familiarize themselves with fields that are new to them.
- Teachers and school administrations with whom every step of the project is discussed and coordinated observe the process itself from their specific expertise and are its co-formers. They are the children's confidants on site.
- Craftsmen (as well as the students) - in this case clay builders, carpenters, potters, videographers and so on - are often role models for the young people. Since the work always leads to unusual ideas and forms, they are challenged in their expertise and subject-specific creativity. This often leads to further professional qualifications and new perspectives.
- Artists who bring unexpected ways of seeing and doing things with their projects.
- Architects, engineers and scientists see the attraction of project participation in the fact that it involves uncharted territory. This leads to the participation of the "best in their field".
In 2009, the building of the Alfred Herrhausen School was barely visible through bushes from the street, as if symbolizing the shame of attending a special school, thus seemingly having failed in the normal. At that school, they did not give themselves much confidence. Even the teachers asked, “Would they even be able to do it?” The children asked themselves, “Can I really do it?”
The approach of the project shifted that to a very different perspective: “What arises when we perceive ourselves and our own impulses and take them seriously?” This is the result of the cooperation of artists with alert educators.
In 2013, after we had been awarded the school building prize, the headmaster suggested: “There is a neighbourhood not far from here – about a third of our pupils come from there. If we manage to initiate a change there, then everyone will help us.“ The respective quarter was built in the 1960s to shelter homeless families. It’s squeezed between two motorways, railroad and a former steel mill and confronts residents and police with problems. Since generations the kids have been sent to this school. It has the lowest socio-economic ranking in the city, although disproportionately provided with social work. The residents feel uncomfortable “outside”.
Our approach is to perceive and accept the individual as they are, without attempting any influence. By proceeding with your own creativity, own intuition,you have the chance to notice that you can contribute constructively to the community, to your school, to your city. That’s what is to grasp. Everybody is genuinely involved – in planning, development of material and technology, in finding a form. That’s a new approach for the kids, but also for everybody else. Each one has an important role and becomes aware of that. Adults are learning from the children to value and follow unusual ideas. Researchers are fascinated by the fact that this approach leads to whole bundles of innovation.
Pablo Molestina, in the advisory board of the project, summarized in 2015: “I am mainly interested in processes that end up in formal results. With this project I associate the attempt to plant artistic content into the DNA of the processes of construction [and the changes we have to deal with]. Beyond that, I am interested in looking at the whole – where in the process of […] building there are usually rather only individual interests, individual building sites.“
All the ideas, products, architecture, designs, innovations developed in this project are due to the artistically accompanied process and the expertise of the disciplines involved. The very specific method of using artistic work prepares a favourable environment accomplish all that.
One of the particular abilities of artists is their awareness of form.
Recognising the process itself in its formability allows great freedom. It involves perceiving the motion of the world we are part of. Making the form of processes visible allows even between to grasp very different people, cultures and fields of knowledge. It enables conversation between children and architects, artists, engineers or scientists.
Process and result are an important corrective to each other. The quality of the process can be read from the form and vice versa. If the form is a built space, as in the case of the platform Wiesencafé, then a successful process creates a built form, which in turn gives space for further processes. This platform is a laboratory for:
• Collaboration
• Research
• Urban planning
• Inventing food, architecture, ..., structure, economy, etc.
• Sharing and development of the used method
• Public space for open use
• The concept of offering breeding space for certain species of insects on the outside of the walls of the future building with contribution to biodiversity and nature
• The cooperation between lays and professionals
• Interaction of practice and theory
The basis of the methodology is to use further concrete possibilities of communication beyond spoken language.
The best starting point for any project are complex situations of any dimension, where everyone assumes they are unchangeable, unsolvable and so on. The condition for that is to start allowing any results.
First step are questions like: "What should stay the same? What should be gone? What is missing? By closing the eyes, the own imagination is activated. The imagined is represented with the help of drawings, three-dimensional models, like from amorphous plasticine. Each sketch and each model is considered. The task is to discover the special, interesting in it. Ideas are further formulated in dialogue. The process continues in small and larger groups until one or more ideas are formulated in more concrete models. The physical presence of the models and drawings enables communication at eye level. Then professionals are brought in. They work one-on-one with the young partners. Relevant areas of expertise are often represented by both theoreticians and practitioners. The basic ideas are developed in personal presence and in dialogue.
The strategy involves following ideas beyond preconceived notions. Contradictions are considered for their potential, different perspectives as enrichment. The artistic task is to keep the totality in view. Realizations happen in a process with feedback loops, until optimal solutions are found, implemented and further refined.
Teachers are involved as confidants and with their pedagogical expertise. The children learn with high sustainability, even in very demanding contexts. The experience of thinking for themselves strengthens them for the rest of their lives.
Careful documentation ensures that all observations and ideas, including authorship, remain present. The idea generators and specialists are involved right up to the results. This leads to great professional motivation, high quality of conception and execution.
Globalization and urbanization, war, the consequences of colonialism, the destruction of open nature and landscape and the climate crisis are creating more and more regions that are cut off from prosperity, marginalized social groups for whom the Western concept of the world does not fit. Increasing range and complexity brings planning to its limits. For survival it is essential to take ecological interrelations into account. Unplannable developments force civil society to react. Here, a field opens up for a special field of the art, those work is involved with change, complex systems and open-ended processes. This leads, almost incidentally, to innovation, school development, jointly created public space and, as our project shows, even to a new building material, with an unimagined potential.
The artists who were our guests at Wittenberger Weg reflected the transdisciplinary quality of the project. The consequent beginning in the local field leads to solutions that also touch on the big global issues. This is because we are all directly or indirectly affected by them: The tensions between rich and poor, the urgently needed developments of resource-saving and life-friendly construction methods, the blatant waste of human intelligence through social inequalities in the education system, the need of all people for beauty, aesthetics, contact with nature.
The platform on Wittenberger Weg offers space for this. Ideas are tested and implemented in real situations. People are actively involved in planning and shaping their environment. The Zentrum für Peripherie follows the assumption that new ideas rather emerge in social, geographical and intellectual peripheries.
We show how artistically guided, open-ended processes can develop concrete and practical ideas and implementations for the challenges we face as humanity. We establish research, networks of transfer, exchange and further development.
The project benefits from a professionalism that allows it to approach challenges with joy and to deal openly with new ideas and impulses. Thus, over a long period of time, a cautious trust has developed in the city administration, also in other rather conservative structures, that it is indeed possible, perhaps even forward-looking, to work with the openness that the project and the people behind it stand for.
Therefore we’ll build the Wiesencafé's Wellerlehm (cob) walls in 2024.
We will use a working structure that has been tried and tested since 2018 as the construction: What we call ‘construction weeks’ are always in the responsibility of a class of the special school and a group of pupils. First they are experiencing the cob technique. On the next days of the week, further schools and their teachers also have the opportunity to participate. The walls will be built in 8 weeks from March to September. During his time, still open details and concerning the structure of the planned real-life lab are planned. This lab is giving space for inventing, working, reflecting, cooking and eating together. In 2025, after another 8 weeks of building, the Place will open to public.
The operation of the lab will start with the loam building. Our goal is to securely finance the lab by 2030, also with EU funding, and to make it such a success that it becomes a permanent part of the culture of education, research and life.
The goals are to create:
- an example of the deep joy of life that comes from taking responsibility for something to which one has contributed oneself;
- an example of the technology and natural beauty of cob as a building material from excavated soil as a contribution to a new type of building culture;
- an example for the potential of real participation;
- the physical appearance self-built structures, co-created beauty and
- the basic experience: „I can take my life into my own hands and contribute meaningfully to the common good.“
In your tender text, the term ‘climate anxiety’ appears. Children (and adults) experience on Platform Wiesencafé that scary things are easier to cope with together. And that even major challenges can be the starting point for new paths into the unknown, and even for beauty. To participate with your own creativity and curiosity in inventing something of what you don't know yet what it will be, is an experience that makes us as human beings gain trust in ourselves. With this attitude and life experience one is already halfway to building a "community of practice".
Our project structure allows a specific way of passing on the working method for teachers. This is important to maintain the experimental core.
In the beginning a participand always experiences the working method themself. This happens in a topic which is relevant to the individual and the group. It can be quite simple: arranging tables and chairs in a seminar room, or inventing a common meal from what everyone carries in their pocket, or any other subject. With their own project experience, they come into the project, integrate themselves, enter into partnerships with the children, work and discuss with them. Later they analyse their observations together and find their own way of presenting what they might develop further. I know from feedback that, just as with the children, this is a long lasting strengthening experience and source for the own life and work.
The socio-political goal is to recall the potential of artistic work: To make our reality visible in each generation included what we have swept under the table. It might turn out as a treasure.
