Deutsches Architekturmuseum (DAM) has been chosen to represent Germany at Venice Biennale 2016 with the exhibition Making Heimat. Germany, Arrival Country. The DAM team - including general commissioner and director Peter Cachola Schmal, curator Oliver Elser, and project coordinator Anna Scheuermann - has already begun to collect examples of buildings that are being transformed for refugees and migrants - from large reception centers to refugee-led bicycle workshops. All work will be presented to the public in early 2016 as "an information pool for planners and policy-makers."
“The current refugee situation is part of a massive worldwide flow of migrants. It leads people from the countryside into cities," says the team. "What are the challenges facing cities with incoming refugees and migrants? Where in Germany are the preferred 'arrival cities' located? How do newcomers become socially integrated citizens? And how can architecture and urban design contribute to this process? Taking as a starting point the hypotheses put forward by the Canadian journalist Doug Saunders in his best selling non-fiction book ‘Arrival City’, the DAM team, with Saunders as advisor, examines these questions in the exhibition 'Making Heimat' in the German Pavilion. How, in the future, can Germany’s “arrival cities”, such as Offenbach am Main respond and hypothetically shape the conditions that create a good ‘Arrival City’?”
Exhibition and catalogue design will be executed by the Berlin practice Something Fantastic.
