Bauschule Wagenhallen Stuttgart

With regards to the coming restoration works on the Wagenhallen in Stuttgart, a temporary container city was put up on the space in front of the waggon depots that serves as working, production and event space for the artists of the Wagenhallen. Within the planning and realization procedure of this container city the BAUSCHULE’16 took place in August as an ignition moment for the constructions. A festival of a special kind, it was offering to participate on different construction sites and a on the development of a locally implemented media installation in collaboration with designers, craftsmen, self-builders, communication designers and media artists.

The strategic focus of this workshop was to develop common spaces and infrastructure that would be shared by the soon to move in artists, guests and passersby – to make this container city a truely city-like structure. Accompanied by the constructLab-team the participants of the Bauschule, who were people interested in getting some practical skills and knowledge to complement their professions or studies or to see something completely different from their routine, were design-building, eating and partially sleeping on site for one week. The result were a structure to shadow and equip the central market place, an oasis to serve as the cities Naherholungsgebiet (recovery in short distance area), plug-on-container prototype outside furnitures, trash, lightning and ashtrays and finally the info point and orientation system for the city. The Bauschule was equipped with wood and metal workshops and guidance as well as mental input through a lecture series, while constructlab was providing a frame of exercises and exchange formats to explore topics such as building together, idea exchange, tools, materials and movement. We set us the goal to not pre-design conditions or elements, but to integrate the design process and process design in the building workshop. We saw our role as a moderation and guidance in the beginning towards a quality check in the end. Hereby not only the skills of working on the material were developed, but also the understanding of how the process of thinking something is closely related to producing it, how simple ideas become bulky in space, how much understanding, moving, questioning and giving up are part of the design process and last but not least the energy it takes to realize something and the force with which it has to want to come out.

For more information on Bauschule’16 click here.