StadtLand:Kirche ­ Hybrid Public Spaces

On May 11, 2023, the trav­el­ing exhi­bi­tion ​“StadtLand:Kirche. Hybrid Pub­lic Spaces” (CityCountry:Church. Hybrid Pub­lic Spaces), designed by chezweitz, opened at the Region­al Church Office of the Evan­gel­i­cal Church in Cen­tral Germany.

The back­ground: There are 3,910 church­es and chapels in Cen­tral Ger­many alone – that’s about 20% of all Protes­tant church­es in Ger­many! At the same time, the num­ber of their users is declin­ing rapid­ly. The church is in a deep cri­sis: But where hope is seem­ing­ly at its low­est, the sav­ing pow­er also grows. Thus, many com­mit­ted peo­ple in Thuringia are dar­ing to embark on a jour­ney into the future under the umbrel­la of the ​“StadtLand:Kirche” project. They are awak­en­ing all their won­der­ful, small, old church­es from their slum­ber, and many new ideas, con­cepts, and projects have emerged since 2016. We are delight­ed to have been able to sup­port this unique ini­tia­tive from the very beginning.

For sev­en years now, we have reached many mile­stones with the project spon­sors – the Evan­ge­lis­chen Kirche in Mit­teldeutsch­land (EKM) and the IBA Thuringia. We often went beyond our core pro­fes­sion, scenog­ra­phy, vis­it­ing the peo­ple involved on site, lis­ten­ing to their sto­ries, and devel­op­ing ideas to help their church­es become vibrant cen­ters of com­mu­ni­ty once again. All of this was cul­mi­nat­ed in count­less hours of col­lab­o­ra­tive work with the project group, which cul­mi­nat­ed this year with a major final exhi­bi­tion at the Eier­mann Build­ing in Apolda.