OBDACH, ARMUT UND WOHNRAUM - »WIE KÖNNEN WIR MENSCHENWÜRDIGER WOHNEN?«

Weimar Controversies on the correlation between the question of housing and our community

The Bauhaus Museum Weimar is currently showing Jana Sophia Nolle’s photo series ‘Living Room’. For her images, Nolle transplants temporary homeless shelters into the living rooms of wealthy individuals to make the contrast between contemporaneous ways of life apparent in visual form. Professor Gerhard Tra- bert, a specialist in Social Medicine, has been active in his support for the homeless for over thirty years, notably through his charity Armut und Gesundheit in Deutschland (Poverty and Health in Germany), and campaigns against the disastrous link between pover- ty and ill health. Though they use very different means, both confront us with the fact that, even in the 21st century for many people the issue of housing consists of having to search for shelter every day. Why is this happening? And how can we live more humanely? The conversation between Jana Sophia Nolle and Gerhard Trabert is part of the Weimar Controversies. 100 years after model Haus am Horn opened, we are still looking for answers to the urgent questions asked by the first Director of the Bauhaus, Walter Gropius: “How will we live, how will we settle down and what form of community do we wish to aspire to?”