Poor or Rich? A Café on the Wittenberger Weg

The Albert Sevinc Foundation has decided to fund the »Poor or Rich? A Café on the Wittenberger Weg« project. This means that the Foundation will be supporting a project conceived by the Düsseldorf artist, Ute Reeh. She has taken up a challenge that both social work in general and municipal investment have been unable to resolve for fifty years.

Initiated in 2013, Ute Reeh’s project started out in the form of discussion and internal processes of change. Through the lens of contemporary art, young people attending the Alfred Herrhausen School in Garath are creating new perspectives for themselves and for others living in an isolated, urban-development hotspot situated on Düsseldorf’s southerly periphery. Central to this initiative was their idea to plan, build and run a café in the area, which was itself originally conceived as a community housing solution for homeless families.

After an encouraging construction project (a terrace at the Alfred Herrhausen School which was awarded the 2013 NRW Prize for School Construction), these young people view their area with different eyes. Being caught in a triangle between a large carriageway, a motorway and an industrial area prompts the desire for a place where one can meet and where people, their qualities and faces can be seen.

Collaborating to change the face of the seemingly hopeless

Ute Reeh encouraged the children and young people to trust their own impulses and observations and helps them to realise them in their drawing and modelling. This prepared them well for their encounters and exchanges with architects, planners, politicians, members of the council and restaurateurs. In conjunction with the children and young people, the artist integrated their suggestions into a vision in which every idea has a place and a part to play.

From a social point of view, this has unexpectedly positive spin-offs. As it is a win-win situation for both sides and as ideas and qualities are generated that none of the experts would have come up with on their own, an exchange takes place on an equal footing and with mutual respect. The children become aware of their capabilities and this awareness becomes a springboard for further development. An overwhelming beauty derives from the collaboration and implementation of the plan. This concerns the choice of colours and materials as well as the formal language of spatial construction itself. This resides in the growing density and complexity with each step of the plan.

Particular value has been placed on the realisation of specific, tangible steps visible to everyone. The steps so far include: 1 to 1 scale model of the café made out of battens and foil, precise demarcation of the floor plan and distribution of space, building a prototype cob bench to asses the properties of the material and as a preliminary step in the implementation process, production of and design for colour schemes for the tiles in the kitchen and toilets/washrooms, design and production of furniture.

The Albert Sevinc Foundation decided to fund and provide technical support for the realisation of the communication platform planned for 2017, which will be cast in concrete. Thus, the foundation will facilitate effective activities for local residents and the project itself, both outwardly and inwardly. A cob structure is planned for this concrete base in 2018/19 using a contemporary modification of the »Wellerbau« (cob work) technique.

Why a ghetto? All paths meet at the Meadow

We are also supporting this project because the collaborative processes described here lead to people forging new, complex relationships and forms of community that extend beyond normal parameters. This concerns local networking in the city and beyond city and state boundaries. We are particularly pleased that the project will have a cross-border component embodied by the plan to hold an international summer academy in 2018/19. Substantial sections of the building are to be constructed in conjunction with local residents, young people and students, as well as various cob specialists, »Wellerbau« experts from Düsseldorf University, not to mention interested students and teachers from the TU Berlin, the TU Vienna and the University of Münster.