Site Specific: Offenbach Kaleidoscope

ANA - Offenbach am Main, Germany, 2023

Changing the way a building is perceived can be an important step towards it becoming a candidate for preservation, rather than demolition. For re-use to be even an option a building has first to be acknowledged, it has to be seen.

In part a publishing project and in part a physical intervention in the city, this project sought to document and then (re)present the Gothaer-Haus to the citizens of Offenbach am Main in Germany. It is an extended act of observation and participation that attempts to make this building a stronger imaginative figure in the minds of the citizens who pass it by everyday and then, perhaps, less likely to be simply erased from the urban landscape as part of future development.

ANA A tribune that invites to you sit and pause. A place that reorientates the view. A sound box that tells stories of the place. Temporary vegetation which provides shade and becomes a habitat for insects and small animals.

The Offenbach Kaleidoscope project is an attempt to take a fresh look at a specific, existing building: the Gothaer-Haus in Offenbach am Main. The building was planned and constructed during the late 1960s and early 70s – an era whose architecture nowadays is often being rejected as ‘ugly’. At the same time about one third of the current European building stock was built during that period, which makes an engaged discussion about these buildings unavoidable.

At the same time, many things are currently changing in the immediate surroundings of the Gothaer-Haus: new buildings are being constructed nearby and, in the near future, the large car park at the front of the building is to be transformed into a public, car-free space. For the physical installation part of the Offenbach Kaleidoscope project, we placed a temporary timber structure within six parking spaces that were closed during the summer months of 2023 (in cooperation with the Office for Planning and Building of the City of Offenbach).

Through this intervention the space was not only activated for the public, but at the same time the idea of a civic square was tested, in order to learn lessons and gain inspiration for the future transformation of the place.

The installation was preceded by the publication of Offenbach Kaleidoskop – Geschichten eines Hauses (Spector Books, 2022). In this book the Gothaer-Haus becomes the starting point for conversations with people who have a personal or professional relationship to the building. These perspectives penetrate its reflective surface, deconstructing the building as part of a complex network of relationships. This is an attempt not only to expand the way we look at a particular individual object, but also, more generally, to realign our view and to make the value of such buildings visible within the complex web of histories and relationships.

NOTES

Thanks to Lukas Fink for his help in compiling this post.

The Offenbach Kaleidoskop book can be bought from Spector Books here.

For more information about ANA Institiute see their website here and their Instagram account here.

Photography by Charlotte Schaeben, Sophia Igel and Tobias Fink.

Published on 18th July 2024.

We’ve previously published project by ANA here.