Open Houses –
room open for those
who come along.

Open Houses –
no empty buildings, but places with visible and invisible traces of history,
places which have grown and decayed
during the centuries,
which were shaped by those
who lived there long time ago
and those
who left only yesterday,
places which will be shaped
by each of us
who lives there
or who comes as a guest.

Open Houses –
room
which wants to be filled
with dreams and ideas,
with meetings and exchange,
by people of different backgrounds,
different cultures,
different generations,
different ideas and visions.

Commitment to these churches united people who enjoyed the freedom that came with the work. As a result, the buildings were revived - whether through exhibitions, concerts, making music together or sitting round the camp fire.

The rooms were once again filled with life, something which mere craftsmen's works could not achieve. In the meantime, although rooms free of political and ideological pressure are no longer so urgently required, places where people can meet without economic constraint and far from bureaucracy, institutionalisation, nepotism and society’s exclusions have become rare.

Though a simple concept - one where people came together for a common purpose, it seems all the same a difficult one to put into practice. The tightrope walk between public activities in a monetary or functional sense and the retreat to privacy is far from easy and tackling red tape and financial restrictions necessitates permanent effort. ‘Public space’ is less and less understood as common property, and is constantly being cut down.

‘Public property’ seems to have gone out of fashion, and places of common responsible work are now rare. The Open Houses Network aims to create and protect such places.

In this process, we do not want to be the doers, but instead people who have a vision, who want to initiate something, and who achieve through co-operation with others. We see the projects, activities and opportunities we provide as offers, offers which lead to common commitment, meetings and change.

.. for bringing alive that what, for a long time, had been forgotten ...

Currently Open Houses is taking care of half a dozen old buildings in the eastern part of Germany. All of them are delightful ensembles, affected neither by the results of industrial construction nor bulldozers in the GDR, nor by the blessings of the modern building industry. Viewing and touching these ensembles gives an understanding of their centuries-old history.

Nevertheless, decades without a caring spirit and without maintaining hands have left their mark on the houses. Mostly they were not used for a longer period of time and faced wind and weather conditions that left them seriously damaged.

Step by step these houses are being brought back to life. While a part of a building still carries a just scantily-repaired roof, a second part of has already been repaired and extended, while a third part is being used for accommodation puropses and for events. In this way, rebuilding and using the houses are not activities separate from each other - they take place at the same time, and ideally are part of the same process. Alongside the goal of making the ensemble useable again, those taking part will look again at the way this can be done - at the way of dealing with historical buildings.

From our point of view, the construction and the maintenance of buildings has to be understood primarily as an way of enabling people to get together and interact with each other and the buildings, and to facilitate an exchange of ideas and a learing process.

Dealing appropriately with historical ensembles implies for us that the significance of the natural habitat surrounding them is taken into account - areas that are often today overgrown yet as a rule were originally an integral part of the complete structure concerned. The careful and where possible equal treatment of trees and of buildings, of outdoors and of indoors, of that which has grown and that which has been built is therefore an essential part of our activities.

We consider it important to let each building keep its particular spirit, history, and atmosphere, instead of confronting them with the supposed needs of utilisation, and instead of forcing them into a standardised concept of use as thought-up today. Sensibility for the special character of each building and its appropriate contextual and geographic dimension when it comes to its charisma means that each of the ensembles we look after develops its own profile, despite our intentions in each case remaining the same. A noble renaissance castle near to a regional capital has therefore a different potential when compared to a former vicarage in the infastructurally weak area of Mecklenburg.

Finally, it is our aim to make all our buildings accessible and usable for everybody who is interested. When it comes to differing personal, professional and financial situations, the only equally possible form of participation is the individual commitment and involvement of a person. As we understand it, this variety does not present us with limitations, but instead enriches the projects.

Everybody who wishes to do so may contribute with their own ideas and energy as much as he or she wants to do so, no matter whether only for a weekend, regularly alongside their actual profession, or within the framework of an individual time of recreation.

Moreover, our houses are open for those individuals and groups who want to work there on their own activities and who want to perform their own projects, no matter if they have an artistic, a skilled, a social or a philosophical orientation.

In this way, a whole open microcosm appears which is characterized by common activities and commonly shared responsibilities. The equal value of different occupations allows us to rethink traditional patterns of hierarchy, to overcome personal borders and often opens – both for the person involved as for the project itself – unexpected new perspectives.