building the CP-box

Under construction

The following task was to build the CPbox. We managed to reuse the wood from the demolished temporary pavilion and old pergola to build the box and pavilion furniture. The CPbox is multifunctional. It can be used as a cinema bar, party kitchen, storage room, puppet theatre... and information point. On the back side of the CPbox there is a black board which can be used for announcements for events in the pavilion, education actions and chalk graffiti. The CPbox has also a poster wall, access to tab water and electricity. With the addition of the box the pavilion is now ready to host a range of various activities.
Our building team has been enlarged with people from Wohnheim Hustadtring.

building the roof

Finally we started to build the roof. It was a rainy day, of course, when they delivered the material for the roof very early in the morning. At first we were five people (Matthias, Philipp, Tobias, Faruk and myself) and then some others joined in. Finally everybody was helping us; Claudia from IFAK made coffee for us, Aino from the Pizzeria gave us water, Ismail from the Kiosk brought us some sweets. We worked for 14 hours to finish the roof. The work was quite dangerous since we didn’t have enough money to build the scaffolding or any kind of protection system. At the end of the day (quite late in the day) Hustadt got a public roof!
Many thanks to: Thobias, Matthias, Philipp, Wolfgang, Peter, Faruk, Memet, Tugai and Claudia!

Community Pavilion – Brunnenplatz 1

The structure is finished ‐ build by the City, everything else we need to finance and make ourselves: roof, storage, projection screen, furniture, herb garden, technical equipment...

Unterzeichnung der Absichtserklärung / Letter of Intend

Letter of Intent ‐ a letter where WE ‐ individuals and NGO’s from Hustadt confim our future engagement with the Community Pavilion.

The Letter of Intent has been signed by:
Apolonija Šušteršič, Alexander Kutsch, Bepna Eickhoff, Prof. ChrisCan Uhlig, Christoph Nitsch, Claudia Linden, Dr. Dieter Kraemer , Dr. Ernst Kratzsch , Esmayil Ehsan, Faruk Cevik, Dr.med. Herta Fischer, Juna Tilner, Manhias Köllmann, Masoumi Javed, MarCn Kompa, Monika Gärtner, Niemat Chekif, Philipp Unger, Renate Thomas, Rolf Haarmann, Silke Bolesta, Susanne Breindenbach, Uta Schüne, Wilfried Unger

Der Brunnenplatz in der Hustadt soll schöner werden

Ruhr Nachruchten.de
Ruhr.2010
22.2.2010

Petition for the water and the electricity in the Community Pavilion

Aktionsteam organised signing a petition for water and electricity in the Community Pavilion to hand in to the City of Bochum. The City was namely trying to spare money by sizing down the project as much as possible. However, we believed that water and electricity were essential for the successful functioning of the Community Pavilion in the future. This action provoked the city to organise an extraordinary meeting in SUB for all the people involved and take a decision about this matter. After a long negotiation we managed to persuade the City to plan the installation of water and electricity within the Community Pavilion. Another major victory for us.

The Temporary pavilion is finished

Bau des temporären Pavillons auf dem Brunnenplatz - (Building of temporary pavilion)

UmBAU_stelle_ HUstadt / Temporary Pavilion on Brunnenplatz The project was done together with social-activist Matthias Köllmann who was also a member of the Aktionsteam. Together we developed the idea of building a Temporary Pavilion, which would be a try-out for the Community Pavilion proposed within the urban re-design plan of Hustadt. However, the idea wasn’t only to build a “try-out” for the future public platform but to utilise the building process to establish communication with people living at Brunnenplatz and its close vicinity. Besides we were able to observe very closely how people – different age groups – used the place itself and what could be the potential and problems within the planning of the future situation. (att.7) Gallery m, which had invited me to make the project, organised some second-hand cheap boards and even some other construction material for free which helped a great deal. The City neither approved nor dis-approved of building the Temporary Pavilion. Nevertheless we didn’t get any official building permission for this temporal structure that was placed on Brunnenplatz for another 8 months.

Demonstrations in Bochum; Wir sind Bochum

MOVING TO HUSTADT; GETTING PLACE TO LIVE AND WORK

I decided to move to Hustadt to have a better chance to learn about the place. Of course, I could have made several site visits as well since it is not that far away from Amsterdam. However, this was also a personal experiment, not only necessary for the research itself. Just as an anthropologist approaches her topic as a participant-observer, I felt this approach was vital to the project. I got a place to live and work, which I shared with the Stadtumbaubüro Hustadt – SUB. They had just opened their office in the neighbourhood at the same time. My space was about 40 m2 situated on the ground floor with direct access from Brunnenplatz. The view from my kitchen was of Brunnenplatz. I also shared a meeting space of 15 m2 with SUB. I used it occasionally for meetings and dinners. Interestingly, although we (SUB and myself) did not know of each other prior to my moving in, we had both been commissioned by the City of Bochum. Their task was to open an “independent neighbourhood management office” which would facilitate communication between the inhabitants and the city about the regeneration project for “Innere Hustadt”. SUB was two people: sociologist Uta Schütte-Hermeyer and urban planner Alexander Kutsch. From them I also learnt of another partner in “our team”: a landscape-architect office, represented by Christine Wolf, that had been commissioned for the urban design of the public space in the area called “Innere Hustadt”. When we finally all got to know one another, we were able to cooperate very well together. They all have been very curious about my work and very enthusiastic about my ideas and methods of research. Of course, it took some time before they understood what I was doing, however, with time they have come to highly appreciate my comments and critiques. I myself have learned a lot from working with them as well. The only partner in the team who was very much suspicious of my actions in Hustadt was the representative of the City of Bochum. I got a 9-month contract (until May 2009) to produce an art project. Yet it was already clear from the beginning that the whole planning/building process would not be finished by then or would maybe just start happening by that time. The latter eventually proved to be the case. Either the City had been speculating about me producing something “fast and cheap” or they hadn’t been thinking at all. This early oversight became quite an important issue later on.