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community table
TRÄUME AUS SCHÄUMEN – Die Kunstfreiheit des Bauantrags
What is participation?
How do you consolidate a space that doesn’t actually exist? We spent a summer looking for answers to this question as part of a 1:1 experiment in Hamburg’s Rothenburgsort district. As part of a larger-scale post-corona city project, we were commissioned to create a temporary and participatory realization of a previously imagined square at a central intersection at the entrance to the district. The fictional “Billhorner Platz” was to become a living reality for one summer - with and for the neighborhood.
In an open development process between July and September, we worked together with the residents in three consecutive steps - on what was to become a participatory sculpture park within a very short space of time:
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Ideas arise easily in art school
In the first week of the workshop, we devoted ourselves entirely to construction drawing and planning and used artistic means to break out of our role as experts in order to involve as many other people as possible directly in the practice. Instead of working with boring, ready-made vision images, technical drawings or - even worse - renderings and 3D visualizations, we decided in advance on the “classic children’s drawing” as a stylistic device and space-creating experiment. Everyone was able to put their ideas and wishes for the “Billhorner Platz” on paper in the form of childlike and basic drawings.
In this case, the paper was also the tablecloth of a long table, which was laid out virtually around the clock in front of our double-decker bus directly on the intersection and invited people not only to draw, but also to eat and get together every day. At the end of the week, we had 147 (!) ideas on paper, which we subsequently clustered a little according to use. The aim was to create sculptures with multiple uses that were as close as possible to the “original plans”.
In order to take a further step towards this project, which should of course also take place with the participation of the neighborhood, we learned various production techniques in the second workshop just a few weeks later under the title “Building School”. Beforehand, we had been looking for “hidden skills” in the neighborhood - people who have manual and artistic skills that they can not only contribute, but also pass on to others. And of course we found what we were looking for: under the guidance of neighbors, we learned - again directly on site - how to lay tiles, tailor, process wood and weld metal together.
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Construction school: Working with wood
We declared the square a co-creative sculpture park and invoked the future artistic freedom of local residents.
At the same time, we had to solve perhaps the trickiest task in this project: the official approval to start building the ideas summarized in sculptures in the final step. Normally, such an approval process requires the submission of precise and detailed plans, and such planning processes often take a few years rather than the few weeks we had available for this project. Instead of detailed plans, however, we “only” had children’s drawings - on purpose - so that the usual procedure was out of the question for us. So we had to dig really deep into our bag of tricks and at some point we had the decisive and hitherto unique idea of changing the juridical genre without further ado. We declared the objects to be built as participatory works of art, and thus declared the square a co-creative sculpture park, and also invoked the future artistic freedom of the residents. This meant that it was sufficient to submit only vague plans, which were mainly related to the location of the objects, and we were given permission to start construction without concrete and approved plans and to keep the construction process itself open-ended.
We then moved on to the third and final part of the workshop and the actual highlight of the 1:1 experiment: a large open construction site on which the residents’ designs were implemented, again together and within just one week. Here, people discussed, shaped, tiled, painted and concreted for all they were worth - in the truest sense of the word. That’s right: concreted.
Because we had no desire for the usual “roof batten aesthetics” that such temporary structural interventions often fall into, we set out right at the start of the project to find an alternative material that would allow us to be as true to the original organic shapes from the children’s drawings as possible and would also be more durable than wooden constructions, which usually start to rot after a few weeks in the northern German weather conditions. During this search, we finally came up with foam concrete - made from lots of air, water and white cement. This not only makes it much lighter and - due to the low material consumption - more sustainable than traditional concrete, but it is also much easier to work with. We were able to make the formwork for the sculptures from canvas and straw bales and simply hang them in scaffolding to dry, or work with formwork that was simply sewn together. This simple handling made it possible for children and laypeople to help build and shape the sculptures on site, even at this stage. Derived from the previous workshop, we also decided to use the additional materials tiles and metal and also incorporated a - partially repurposed - readymade into some of the sculptures. For example, an old chewing gum machine was turned into a love letter machine, a washing machine drum was turned into a fire barrel, the stage was given lighting and the large community table was given a barbecue.
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Exposed concrete formwork with Sven Backstein
In this way, a square has been created in a place that does not actually exist, full of colorful and aesthetically pleasing sculptures that cannot be overlooked and that not only invite people to use the “Billhorner Platz”, but also to appropriate it and think about it further. This also sets an example for the current and upcoming plans in this part of the city, which are currently underway as part of the “Alster-Elbe-Bille green corridor” project. The sculpture park can and should be an inspiration for further urban planning and also for any further participation processes. Because only if residents are included in such planning and processes and can be an active part of them will a public space be created by everyone for everyone, which is also experienced as worth living in by all those involved. We are deeply convinced that the best way to rely on the power of change and its long-term effectiveness is if this change is self-made.
We are deeply convinced that the best way to rely on the power of change and its long-term effectiveness is to make the change yourself.
The result is a square in a place that doesn’t actually exist, full of colorful and aesthetically enchanting sculptures that you really can’t miss and that not only invite you to use them, but also to appropriate and think about the “Billhorner Platz”.
