Posted on: 15th February 2022
Special on the Louisiana Channel of Architecture related content, featuring two shorts on architect Anna Heringer in the framework of this year’s festival theme: Living Spatial Justice.
The movies in wonderland #online #architecture #film #festival was initiated during the first lockdown in 2020, curating freely available online content of architecture films. Since then, we have periodically shared a wide range of documentaries, shorts, and animations with our audiences via our website, artinwords.de, and our social media channels.
Anna Heringer
The Walls are Dancing
“With this building everything comes together.”, D: Saralisa Volm, GER 2020.
“It is much more than just a building. It’s a social space. It really has an impact on the society, on the community”, says German architect Anna Heringer about her recently finished Anandaloy-center in Bangladesh. “With this building everything comes together.”
Anna Heringer
Leave No Waste, But Knowledge, D: Saralisa Volm, GER 2020.
“My work is totally mixed. Of course, I am an architect.”
“But I am also a development worker and an activist. If I see a need somewhere or potential, then I get involved. To me, creativity is a tool to improve lives.” German architect Anna Heringer grew up in Bavaria, but spent much of her working life in rural Bangladesh.
To Anna human labor plays a vital role in every building process. “If we don’t use it, we create a social problem.” The same is to be said about local materials: “Materials need a lot of transportation which is not necessary. We have fantastic local materials all around the world, we just need to see and be aware of them. Less concrete, more earth – we can’t continue to build as we do. Here in Germany, I figured out that the cheapest solution always is the least sustainable, while in Bangladesh the cheapest solution also is the most sustainable.”
Knowledge on the other hand should not be limited, but shared and then applied to local conditions. “I think architecture is a really powerful tool to shape our society. Just by the way, we choose our materials, construction processes, and how many people are included in the building we can really make an impact. To me, the essential question that I always have in the back of my mind when I am designing and deciding is: what if seven billion people would decide the same way? Would it contribute to social justice? To the environment? All these questions are central because I deeply believe that the world is not changing through one big decision. It’s the everyday small decisions that are really shaping our environment and society.”
Anna Heringer was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner at her studio in Laufen, Germany, in September 2020.
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