72 Hour Urban Action Lobeda – 2.-5. Mai 2019
In 2019 the Bauhaus will celebrate its centennial anniversary. As part of the- se celebrations movements all over the country are searching for answers to these most urgent social questions posed by the legacy of the Bauhaus: do we want to live together? How does the city of the future look like? Who makes the city today?
We try to answer these questions in Jena with „72 Hour Urban Action“ – a ra-
pid -architecture-festival. „72 Hour urban action“ offers participative urban
development combined with artistic activity for three days and three nights in
Lobeda, Jena‘s biggest tower block district. The Competition will be formed
by 120 Competitors coming from Lobeda, Jena, Germany and the rest of the
world, making up ten international teams. Each team will get a mission and
a site, to design and build an installation in public space in response to local
needs. Residents and neighbours are invited to take part of the public pro-
gram and cheer the teams as they compete against each other and against the 2 ticking clock!
Process in Lobeda:
The festival team has been hosting research and partners workshops in Lo- ebda since 2017, setting up a network of local institutions and looking closely at the use of public spaces in the district. These workshop bring together local experts and residents, social clubs and people with shared interests in resha- ping Lobeda‘s public spaces together. These actors help us understand and know Lobeda from within, map and collect the wishes and needs of the dis- trict and prepare the ground for the international teams to come and work on site. Ten sites are selected and analysed through this collective process and ten missions set the challenges for the teams to respond to. From May 2nd to 5th, these actors will support the competition teams in forming different rapid architecture installations, in a live, public, design and build process with the public as audience. The installations will be evaluated by an international jury, with one team winning the first prize.
72 Hour Urban Action provides for an alternative, collective method to ma- king public space. We know changes in the city can be done together and don‘t need to take a long time. We have seen the benefits of involving professionals and amateurs alike in the making of places and we believe in the power of the small change to make a big difference. The Format was first realized by the biennale of Landscape Urbanism of Bat-Yam by architect Kerem Halbrecht and curator Gilly Karjevsky in Israel in 2010. The Team in Lobeda-Jena includes by architect Lukasz Lendzinski and Designer Markus Niessner. Since 2010 the Format adapted to different urban contexts and was realized in Stuttgart (Ger- many), Terni (Italy), Roskilde (Denmark), Witten (Germany), Istanbul (Turkey) and on Malta (among others).
Short description
Bauhaus anniversary 2019: Lobeda‘s urban structure is a live reminder of the past of this east German region. The buildings of Lobeda exemplify the ideo- logy and values of that time: anonymity, functionality, simplicity and efficiency. This way of building and this understanding of Architecture is not only found in the DDR: These are dreams of modern architecture, as developed, honed and perfected by the Bauhaus in the beginning of the 20th century. The Idea of a global architecture underlies the massive tower blocks district in Lobeda. If you take these buildings out of their negative image of cheap and fast bu-
ilt mass housing one thing becomes clear: the canon of values of the modern age. 72 HUA deals with the questions that were already asked by the famous Bauhaus school in Weimar: How do we want to live together? What does the city of the future look like? How can design change our society?
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The Idea: 72 Hour Urban Action is a contemporary tool for testing designs for public space. It is a tool for resetting our views on public space. This tool, ta- king the form of a design festival, has been making changes in communities since 2010, working with local partners and resident from the bottom up and hands on. 72HUA exposes local needs and offers a fast alternative to tho-
se needs by bringing experts and amateurs to work on a local scale, in micro sites – those neglected pockets of urban space that are too small to officially develop, too big for residents to ignore.
Schedule: On the first week of May 2019, ten teams will inhabit the fabrication camp in Lobeda West, and work in ten intervention sites in the district. The teams will include Lobeda residents as well as international designers, archi- tects, craftsmen and other professional groups. At the public launch event on May 2nd, each team will be allocated a site and a mission, after which they will have only three days and nights to design, plan, budget, construct and build
an urban intervention. Each team can spend up to 2000Euro on materials and must work with local participants. 72 Hours later, on the evening of May 5th, at a public landing event, an international jury will announce the winners, and the neighbours in Lobeda are invited to celebrate with all the team.
Preparation phase: The festival team has been working with local actors and the planning department in Lobeda West for over a year, to map and research potential sites for interventions. Parallel to the architectural research, local re- sidents and experts were asked about their wishes and needs in the district
in various workshops and public meetings. After the selection of a long list of sites, a short list of ten sites is selected together with local authorities and a deeper research and mapping phase begins to identify the mission on each site.
In January 2019, an international open call is launched to invite German and international participants to apply. Past editions of 72HUA open calls have at- tracted Hundreds of applications each, from more than fifty different countries. The participants are selected by the festival team according to skills they can contribute to the teams. Help us spread the word!
Aims: 72HUA acts as proof of concept that activation of public space doesn‘t necessarily need to be complicated. The collaboration with residents serves
to build local capacity for place-making and the understanding of the benefits of an active public space in Lobeda. The festival team hopes that the residents who participate take over the installations and potentially further develop them
The curators: 72 Hour Urban Action was founded by Architect Kerem Halb- recht and is co directed by curator Gilly Karjevsky. The first edition took place in 2010 at the Bat Yam Biennale for Landscape Urbanism in Israel. Since then the format has been brought to different places all over the globe in many va- riations. 72HUA was held in Stuttgart (Germany), Terni (Italy), Roskilde (Den- mark), Witten (Germany), Istanbul (Turkey) and Malta, among others.
For 72HUA in Lobeda West the festival team has expanded to include Architec- ture Studio Umschichten and Communication designer Markus Nießner (niess- nerdesign GmbH). Caroline Zacheiss is the project manager locally in Jena.
Organiser: 72HUA Lobeda is organised by JenaKultur in multilateral coopera- tion with the city of Jena and numerous other partners and supporters.
Contact
Caroline Zacheiß Projektmanagement
JenaKultur Knebelstraße 10 07743 Jena, Germany
Tel: +49 3641 49-8172 Fax: +49 3641 49-8005
For general inquiries: info@72hoururbanaction.de
For questions about the open call: apply@72hoururbanaction.de For Press inquiries: pr@72hoururbanaction.de