As the initiators of the PLATZ project, we were asked by the Pavillion Hannover cultural center in 2017 whether we could build a temporary “retirement home” in the city center for their project “Blaue Zone - alt werden und so”, which would serve as a workshop and event space. We gladly accepted the commission and also decided to offer a workshop format on the topic of “Living in old age”.
We also designed the construction site for the camp in a participatory way and invited the pensioners who had registered for the camp to lend a hand. Together with our friends from Kratafajan - an architecture collective from Innsbruck - and everyone who wanted to, we built the camp within a week. Eight people had registered in advance for the workshop we were offering. When the time came, 80 came.
We were not only overwhelmed by the number of participants, but also by the urgency of this topic and the very real fears and problems of the senior citizens. After brief consideration, we decided to scrap our original workshop concept. A little input with best practice examples and joint design in co-creation simply no longer seemed sufficient to us. Many of the participants were already disappointed and skeptical because they had already attended countless workshops and events before without any results that would have helped them move forward.
Instead, we helped the seniors form a self-organized advocacy group that could represent their interests on a political stage.
Within two weeks, the group - made up of people who had never met before - wrote a manifesto with ten theses, which they presented on the last day to a member of the Bundestag, whom we had specially invited to the camp as an unscheduled event. Although the group had never done anything like this before and were occasionally really annoyed with us because of the excessive demands, they gave a fantastic presentation on the day and were able to win over the politician.
During the workshop, they also developed a vision for a multi-generational housing project, which they then presented to the managing director of a large foundation via Skype - whoever skypes, stays … the first stone has been laid and in the near future, some of the group will actually form a shared flat.
The fighting spirit and self-empowerment from the workshop has also been carried forward. The group continues to meet every 14 days and has become a self-organized lobby for liveable housing for the elderly in Hanover.
