Osthang Project

Ten years ago, in the summer of 2014, a site on the eastern slope of Darmstadt’s Mathildenhöhe, which had been unused for many years, awoke from its slumber. The OSTHANG PROJECT (7 July to 15 August 2014), organized by Darmstädter Architektursommer e. V. in cooperation with the International Music Institute Darmstadt (IMD), activated the site as a temporary cultural project space and brought it back into the city’s consciousness.

It began with a summer school for experimental building, to which curator Jan Liesegang (raumlabor) invited international architecture and design collectives to construct several temporary buildings on the Osthang site together with over 60 participants: atelier le balto (Berlin), collectif etc (Strasbourg), ConstructLab (Berlin/Paris), Atelier Bow-Wow (Tokyo), Martin Kaltwasser (Berlin), Umschichten (Stuttgart), m7red (Buenos Aires) and orizzontale (Rome).

A bridge (Umschichten & m7red), which also served as an information center, an event hall (Atelier Bow-Wow & ConstructLab), a workshop house made of old car parts (Martin Kaltwasser), sleeping cabins in the trees (orizzontale) and, of course, a central kitchen and café (collectif etc), where changing teams cooked for participants and guests during the project and where a meeting place for the people of Darmstadt quickly emerged.

The completed festival campus was then used for discussion forums, concerts, workshops, lectures, film screenings, think tanks and activities by artists in residence. Many different actors from the cultural and creative scene in Darmstadt and the region were represented with projects and were able to use the Osthang as a platform, including the Darmstadt Summer School for New Music 2014. At the heart of the program was the “Thinking Together” format curated by Berno Odo Polzer, a public forum with informal seminars, lectures, discussions, film screenings, artistic projects and communal cooking and eating. As with the Summer School for Experimental Building, the aim of Thinking Together was to bring together people from different areas of culture and science to think about future forms of living together.

From the beginning, the project was planned as a temporary interim use – we had never dared to hope that it would last ten years. This is mainly thanks to the tireless commitment of OHA e. V., which has kept part of the temporary buildings, especially the Main Hall, alive with a fine program of events and gastronomy and has made it one of the most beautiful places in Darmstadt for a long time. It was clear from the outset that the renovation of the exhibition halls would also change the eastern slope. Now is the time to look back on the decade of an ambitious and exciting project, but also to look ahead. Without exaggeration, it can certainly be said that the OSTHANG PROJECT has initiated many things and a new discourse about the site, but above all it has sharpened the senses for a very special area that has stepped out of the shadow of the Mathildenhöhe.