Building cooperatives are a good invention. Many users come together to purchase a plot of land together and to design it according to their common interests. There are a wide variety of interests. Most building cooperatives simply want to live well and inexpensively. Others want to create a commercial and creative quarter together. Our task was a building for a building cooperative of various social democratic institutions with decades, sometimes centuries-old roots.
How do you get started? Talk to us. Talking a lot, with one institution, then with the other and then with the third and again from the beginning. You meet great people and realize that everyone wants the same thing: a common place that exudes a spirit of solidarity and community. How do you find it? With searching. We examined about 35 places in Dresden together until we knew that the place on Devrientstraße had to be built behind the workshops of the Semperoper. Now it's here and it's finished – the Herbert Wehner House. You can see from its architecture that it has come to stay. And that is what we wish for the great people who work in this house. May the spirit of solidarity and communion come and remain forever.
Text: Jan Wiese Architekten with Ralf Wilkening
Drawings: Jan Wiese Architekten
Pictures: Simon Menges
Pictures: Till Schuster
