One ambitious project initiated by kunstprojekte_riem last year has been welcomed by the Munich authorities, who have designated a site on the eastern extension of the Promenade ‘common cultural land’ and handed it over to Messestadt residents for cultural purposes. This area is available to everyone, for setting up a circus, say, or for holding a Midsummer Night’s party.

A small cinema and a Museum of the Future, an area for keeping animals and another for growing plants, a small sports arena, a media room with computers, TV sets and a corner in which to relax, a swimming bath with a large whirlpool – these are the first results of a workshop organised by Quax/Echo to find out how children wished to use and run their own building. This forms part of the concept developed by Michael Clegg and Martin Guttmann for Messestadt, which provides for users to decide on the function, size and furnishings of rooms and to carry out their plans accordingly. The artists’ aim is to counteract what they see as a deficiency of life in the suburb – the lack of opportunities for residents to determine how spaces are used and to create those spaces themselves. Assuming that everyone needs and benefits from personal creative activity and that the inhabitants of Messestadt required scope for developing their own ideas, Clegg and Guttmann came up with the idea of a building that was to be designed and built solely by Messestadt residents, young and old.

Putting such an idea into practice is no easy matter. How is a plot of land to be obtained and who is to pay for it? Can an open planning process function at all when there are bound to be as many opinions as participants? Who is to decide what the building should and could house? And how is it to be built? A first attempt to answer these and other questions was made in November 2000, when a ‘Riemer Runde’ (Riem forum) and a meeting with Clegg and Guttmann initiated an ongoing series of discussions and workshops devoted to the project. These meetings have served to develop the first ideas of participating residents, consolidate them in terms of feasible projects and devise plans for their implementation. Architects and building experts will act as catalysts for concepts invented by those who will use the facility. Whether all this will result in an actual building depends on the Munich authorities and on the degree of commitment shown by the inhabitants of Messestadt.

Summer 2001