Problems and opportunities
The kick-off conference for the IBA Greater Region took place in March. The Greater Region is an association of Saarland, Rhineland-Palatinate, Lorraine, Luxembourg and Wallonia. A feasibility study is now to find out whether the Greater Region could benefit from an IBA.
There are currently several ongoing IBAs in Germany and in neighboring countries. The IBA Heidelberg, the IBA Stuttgart and the IBA Basel – to name just a few. Other IBAs are just waiting in the wings and another one could emerge in the Greater Region. The Greater Region? A union of Saarland, Rhineland-Palatinate, Lorraine, Luxembourg and Wallonia: a total of over 65,000 square kilometers, eleven million inhabitants, three languages, dozens of dialects and plenty of room for ideas.
Outside of the Greater Region, it is not really known. Those who don’t come from there often don’t know what it means. This is not really surprising, as it is a quiet – very idyllic – little corner of the world with Luxembourg and Saarland at its center. In the middle of Europe, but often overlooked. It is an underestimated region, which is precisely why it provides a good breeding ground for new ideas, for example for an international building exhibition.
Professor Stefan Ochs from the Saar School of Architecture (htw saar) has been calling for the IBA Greater Region since 2010. With the help of a feasibility study, his team is trying to find out whether an IBA could be the right instrument for the development of the region – suitable for localizing the problems and focusing on opportunities.
The kick-off conference
As part of the study, the pre-IBA-GR kick-off conference took place on March 6, 2020. Experts and interested parties gathered at the Saar School of Architecture, on the former site of the Göttelborn coal mine, to discuss the various aspects of an IBA. Above all, however, they discussed what the IBA Greater Region should achieve and listened to the recommendations of established IBA experts: starting with the size of the Greater Region and the number of mayors through to partnerships across borders.
The motto of the conference, “Il faut cultiver notre jardin” – “We must cultivate our garden”, was always present: the garden came up in presentations and also in discussions, but also our own consumption and the climate debate. The garden became a symbol of many different aspects that could flow into the IBA Greater Region.
Now it is time to evaluate the amounts and finally cultivate our own garden in times of the pandemic, which brings with it border closures and reorientation.