This astonishing project started as a grassroots movement from below and has grown into a large-scale transdisciplinary culture project. Such a development wouldn\u2019t have been possible without the close cooperation of different institutions, which characterises Graz-based cultural and creative scene.<\/p>\n
Projects like Elevate Festival, Designmonat, Lendwirbel, Galerientage, Architekturtage or Steirischer Herbst all have something in common: All of the city\u2019s large cultural incentives thrive on the close cooperation between larger and smaller cultural institutions and initiatives. Lone wolves are a thing of the past.<\/p>\n
This is how it was possible to launch \u201cArchitektursommer Graz\u201c three years ago without noteworthy support from the public authorities. Several dozen partner institutions already contributed to the project the first time round. This year the project makes a giant leap forward: More than a hundred partners have devised more than two hundred projects, which explore, shape and interpret the urban area with an abundance of new ideas and critical examinations.<\/p>\n
All of that without any production budget for the individual projects! We have one of the project\u2019s main initiators to thank for this little miracle: Markus Bogensberger, head of Graz-based Haus der Architektur, who manages to draw people in with his friendly-appreciative, but also focused manner.<\/p>\n
\u201cGraz-based Architektursommer does not have a curator, but that doesn\u2019t mean that it is unregulated\u201d, says Markus Bogensberger. In fact, one of the project\u2019s strength lies precisely in that factor: \u201cThis is why the project deals with topics that are virulent in the city at that precise moment\u201d. There are no thematic guidelines, but the initiators still take a careful look at the projects\u2019 quality and suggest ideas for further development. They also organise meetings, in which they bring together groups from different<\/p>\n cultural and social fields in order to develop joint projects and to design public space together. \u201cThis open format enables groups from different genres to come into contact with each other. Otherwise these artists probably would never have worked together\u201d, highlights Markus Bogensberger.<\/p>\n This also changes architects\u2018 and planners\u2018 perspectives of the real tasks connected to socially-oriented space development. During some projects free spaces are temporarily rededicated. These experiments have the potential to become self-empowered social redesigns of living spaces. One example is spaceunit.network\u2019s project \u201cPlatzmachen! Andr\u00e4platz?\u201d (Make way! Andr\u00e4platz?). Up to now the crossroads next to Andr\u00e4kirche in quarter Gries is a largely overlooked \u201cnon-place\u201d overrun with cars. During Architektursommer it will be cleared of traffic and given to its residents as a social space. Adjacent Andr\u00e4kirche is well-known due to priest Andreas Gletter \u2013 now bishop of Innsbruck \u2013 who has turned it into one of modern art\u2019s most exciting and most controversial places. Due to this project the church and next-door offices gain new meaning and new social freedom in multicultural quarter Gries.<\/p>\n The varied programme that has been devised for Graz-based Architektursommer can also be seen as a self-appropriation process of the empty spaces left behind by recent Styrian architecture and room development policies. In the 80s a good basis for the so-called \u201cGrazer Schule der Architektur\u201c (Graz-based School of Architecture) was created, partly due to resourceful and quality-based housing policies. Yet on a political level little of this remains. It seems like there is a lack of political partners with a creative drive, who would be interested in establishing a qualitative discourse about room development and architecture. Three years ago Landtag\u2019s large-scale building culture survey led to lots of recommendations, which now seem to lie forgotten in their project drawers. Not a single member of the government regarded this survey as important enough to actually be present. Numerous basis initiatives counter this political disinterest with their self-confident, rebellious and playful contributions to Architektursommer Graz.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.creativeaustria.at\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/InterACT_Zusammensetzung-mit-Abstimmung_1.jpg\")
Make way! Andr\u00e4platz?: Space design as a social process<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n