The most discussed new building in Frankfurt cannot be seen from far away. It is not the umpteenth glass tower in which investors want to park their money, it is not a representative museum building and it is not a new train station or airport. It’s not that easy to find the building, even though it’s close to the exhibition center. Simply follow the signs to the Senckenberg Museum, but then don’t go to the main entrance, but turn into the courtyard just before it. Before you see anything, you can hear and smell that there is a completely different atmosphere here than anywhere else in this city. The lights are subtle and colorful, more reminiscent of a bar. Someone has lit a fire in a bowl, and young people are standing together and discussing everywhere.
At the center of the action is a bold wooden construction that is reminiscent of a holiday home on the coast of Japan or something that director Werner Herzog might build in the jungle on the set of one of his films. It stands in a dreary inner courtyard that you would never notice without this building, even though it is a large area that fits into the dramatic ugliness of some corners of Frankfurt.
The building is called a prototype and is a project of the Städelschule, the University of Applied Sciences and numerous other civil society institutions. It consists of several parts made entirely of wood and steel. The materials were recycled from other construction sites, the wood came from the formwork of a concrete bridge. To the left rises a kind of shelf that can gradually transform into a vertical garden. We try to grow as many vegetables and fruit as possible here, a large green area of possibilities. You can also set up a hammock.
The lower area of the prototype is freely accessible and can be designed flexibly. You can invite people to readings and performances, just drink tea or organize a flea market. The prototype, affordable, flexible and inviting, is also intended to accommodate refugees. So far they have had to live behind fences, in containers or homes, far away from the rest of society. Here, the basement enables an encounter, an urban interaction that sets no limits to the imagination of its users.
The work of art that you have to see in Frankfurt
If you climb the surprisingly stable and wide wooden staircase, you enter the private area. Here you can see two units one above the other, plus two terraces, one very large and one a little more intimate. Inside, the floor-to-ceiling windows and light wooden walls look like a minimalist hotel or an art gallery. And in Frankfurt that is quite a statement, because as in all major German cities, the function of the residential property as an investment dominates here. In the inner courtyard of the Senckenberg Museum there is a dark tower that would also fit into Hamburg’s HafenCity: apartments for millionaires with terraces that are empty most of the year.
This prototype is not used for living, but rather provides a home in exile for the Kabul Center for Contemporary Art. In terms of location, it’s fitting, because the Jewish intellectuals who emigrated during the Nazi era regained a foothold in this neighborhood. Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno walked these sidewalks.
Artists from Kabul have now found accommodation in this avant-garde project. At the top, in the gallery, you can see a simple exercise book. It belongs to a young woman who went to school in Kabul. Until the Taliban banned the girls from teaching. Then the notebook became a diary and finally a work of art. She reports on the devastating terrorist attack on a school, followed by handprints and graphic elements that document the transition from school routine to Taliban horror.
This exhibit alone symbolizes our times better and more urgently than many panel discussions and talk shows. The girl remains anonymous, but the magazine is currently the must-see work of art in Frankfurt.
The prototype, an initiative of the lecturer and author Niklas Maak and the former director of the Senckenberg Museum, Brigitte Franzen, stands in the border region between urban development, migration policy and art. The mayor of Frankfurt, Mike Josef, is the patron of the graceful but stable building. You could set the clock until protests rose from the right. The local one Bildnewspaper was outraged at the supposedly high cost of waste because recycled building materials were used. This is a sum, less than 200,000 euros, for which you can barely build a garage in the Rhine-Main area.
The AfD is scandalizing the project because it is afraid of courage
The local AfD woke up and scandalized the whole project. They are right, because the prototype is very well suited to extracting their most important resources, namely pessimism and fear. If there are more pleasant encounters between refugees and citizens, as is conceivable in the bar-like art space on the ground floor, the stranger’s function as a bogeyman is also reduced. In addition, it is an optimistic project that does not cost huge sums of money, but requires exactly those talents and skills that are already well developed in the German hardware store society.
It’s about art and politics in equal measure, but with a current joke. It is not admonished and warned, but rather invited and encouraged. In the course of working on the prototype, a piece of furniture was created that is suitable for conquering all daycare centers, shared apartments and gardens: the “Unbox” by the three students Lily Baumeister, Luisa Hoist and Celine Hänle. It is an inconspicuous box from which you can remove three stools and a table in just a few simple steps. You can easily set up a play area, a picnic table or a pop-up café. The charisma and charm of the project extend far beyond Frankfurt. You don’t have to leave the country to those with concerns. It is a building against fear. You leave the museum’s courtyard and are inspired to think: Everything could be different.