AN EXCURSION INTO UNCHARTERED TERRITORY, THE STORY BEHIND MAKING HEIMAT, THE GERMAN CONTRIBUTION TO THE 2016 ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE IN VENICE

Making Heimat is growing. We feel delighted that our exhibition at the German Pavilion in Venice has inspired Cartha to do this special edition. But how did it all getting started?

The idea for Germany’s contribution to the Architecture Biennale originated during the turbulent weeks of autumn 2015 when, every day, thousands of refugees were arriving at stations and while the German Chancellor was sticking with an iron will to a policy of no upper limit for the number of refugees coming into the country. “Wir schaffen das” (We can do it). This unexpected openness became the Leitmotiv for the German Pavilion at the Biennale. Months later, the borders are again closed. By contrast, the German Pavilion is open. Four large new openings have been cut into the heritage listed façade.

Together with Something Fantastic – a Berlin based design office – and Clemens Kusch – an architect whose practice has for years now supervised all building and renovation work at the German Pavilion – we begin to draw up detailed plans for the location and size of the openings, plus the tender documents. The Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety is persuaded to back the alterations. In official channels, everything is running like clockwork. Once the Milan consul hands over building application to the German Embassy in Rome, from where it goes to the Foreign Office, who asks the Construction Ministry what on earth is going on, it takes only a few days before two federal ministries have agreed to sign it off. The German Pavilion is to be opened up.

 

Openness or building site?

What precise message should the open pavilion try to convey? The Ministry’s take on it is: since 2015, Germany has become a gigantic building site. By contrast, DAM and Something Fantastic feel the pavilion represents the friendly, open attitude towards all those streaming into Germany. Borders are open, walls are permeable – the country and the pavilion are no longer what they used to be. At the same time, the openings should not just reflect the current political situation, nor should they be a government-built statement sanctioning Merkel’s strategy. The open pavilion should become a meeting place. It should no longer simply be an exhibition space, but a public space, a place flooded with light that draws visitors in. A space that scoops up the lagoon view through these huge openings, and brings it into the otherwise disconnected business of exhibition-making in the Giardini.

Had this idea been proposed for an Art Biennale, one might have said: ‘OK, fine, let’s leave it at that – mission fulfilled’. Would it not indeed suffice to cut open a heritage-listed building that still carries the burden of its Nazi past as well as all attempts at dealing that period, then deem it to be a huge sculpture, and simply leave it empty? Might that be a logical move? Or would such rigorous idealism just be terribly German? At an Art Biennale, an artist would need to throw their full weight behind such a radical gesture. In the Making Heimat project, Something Fantastic took on the role of the artist.

 

Ethnic networks instead of ghettos!

The Arrival City concept was there right from the start of the Biennale project. But opening up the pavilion was still a long way off. The refugee situation had by no means reached such epic proportions when DAM – with Doug Saunders – began their application process for the German pavilion in June 2015. By October 2015 the world had changed. The original idea of using Doug Sander’s book as a springboard to examine what makes a successful Arrival City, and seek out Arrival Cities in Germany, had become eclipsed by the debate about the reception of refugees. However, to talk about Germany as a country of immigrants, rather than discuss the role that architecture and urban planning might now play in helping to cope with the refugee crisis, would have been absurd. Under these circumstances, with so much palpable curiosity and enthusiasm, yet scepticism too, simply leaving the pavilion empty was clearly not an option either. As a result, the exhibition Making Heimat focused on two main issues. The first chapter showcases contemporary housing projects for refugees and in March 2016 a databank, which is continually updated, was set up on the website: makingheimat.de. The second chapter on-site in Venice addresses the question of what actually happens once a refugee becomes an immigrant. First studies indicate that when refugees leave their first officially assigned locality to move to cities, they tend to move to an Arrival City in which their fellow countrymen live. Rather than regarding these Arrival Cities as posing a danger, or as problem zones, ghettos or parallel societies, Doug Sander’s book argues for a shift in perspective, regarding these places instead as offering immigrants an opportunity to start building a new life for themselves within existing immigrant networks.

The pavilion clearly bore the marks of those particular circumstances in autumn 2015, even though – with the closure of the Balkan route, and an agreement with Turkey concerning refugees – the political framework had already changed before the Biennale opened. As a result, by the time the pavilion finally opened to the public its overriding message had already become past history.

 

The pavilion was open but the borders were already closed. A strange situation.

During the Venice days, the space became a place for political manifestations that were banned elsewhere. For instance, a group of french activists presented their magazine at the German Pavilion because they were not allowed to do this in the nearby pavilion of France. So in it is best moments the pavilion was a platform. It was even taken as a starting point for this special issue of Cartha.

We appreciate the selection of authors for this magazine. It might act as an intellectual backdrop for the more pragmatic, more ‘reporting’ approach of our Venice exhibition.

When we write down these lines, Making Heimat has come to Frankfurt.  Coming back home, we took over a different task. Offenbach, an arrival city close to Frankfurt, is now in the focus. It is good to welcome those migrants, which were addressed as abstract subjects before, in our museum. At home we feel a different spirit. From the overview we have moved to the details of the everyday business of living together. The discussion can move on. Cartha and this special issue are a great contribution to this.