Auf den Platz, Fertig, LOS!
Once the pride of socialist urban planning, today Germany's largest urban heritage site: Eisenhüttenstadt is full of surprises
MAY 01 - SEP 30 2023
The project "Auf den Platz, Fertig, LOS!" puts the youth in the center. Which spaces, offers and forms of communication does a city need so that younger generations enjoy living there - so that they stay or even come back, so that they can shape their city and their future?
Together with numerous creative and urban actors, an urban laboratory will be created for one summer at the Platz de Jugend, which will develop and elaborate cultural and creative programs, workshops and installations with and for youth and young adults as well as for urban society and guests of the city.
Platz der Jugend is a special place - it forms the center of the V. Residential Complex, which has lost a number of housing buildings and functional uses in the course of urban shrinkage. Built in the 1960s in the architectural language of modernism, the square's former school, restaurant and shopping arcade have lain fallow for many years. Nature is reclaiming the space. Vandalism destroys listed buildings and building-related art. The "Stadtlabor Eisenhüttenstadt" questions this situation and invites young people and interested people to rediscover the public square, which is attractive in terms of building culture, to use it as a space of possibility and to play with it culturally.
Artistic direction: Miodrag Kuč and Martin Maleschka
Performative installation: Bühne der Baukultur
Stage design: Miodrag Kuč
Light and sound composition: Andreas Tiedemann
Eisenhüttenstadt
Built as Germany's first "socialist planned city" in the 1950s, Eisenhüttenstadt is an expression of a bygone social vision and today a first-rate architectural ensemble that has been restored in a manner befitting a listed building. As Germany's largest contiguous landmark, the city is very attractive for researchers, architects, urban planners, artists and creative people, and has enormous potential for cultural tourism. However, Eisenhüttenstadt is also confronted with major challenges: the peripherally located, formerly mono-industrial steel town has lost 30,000 people and thus more than half of its population in the past 30 years - and the trend is continuing to decline. It is essential to find constructive and future-oriented answers to the massive urban development and social issues associated with the shrinkage.
Project within the framework of the theme year Baukultur Leben 2023 / Kulturland Brandenburg
With the kind support of the European Cultural Foundation
