"BAETSCH" IN THE CITY
WORDS & IMAGES Paul Woodruffe
MLA Unitec, Lecturer, Unitec
In February 2011, Austrian architect and product designer Walter Klasz should have been taking up his residency as a visiting designer at Unitec Institute of Technology in Auckland. Instead he was still in Innsbruck nursing his two young children who had a bad case of chicken pox. I was his friend, and was also to be hosting the New Zealand trip trialling his innovative kayak design the “Backyak” on our beaches, lakes and rivers while staying in a genuine Kiwi “bach”.
Later that year I was sent an invitation to compete for a commission to design an “Urban Acupuncture” in one of five central and eastern European cities; these were to be design and or art interventions placed or performed within urban areas of the cities. This was a site-specific, artist as activist project called “Culburb” funded by the E.U. Cultural Fund, the name referring to culture and urban space. Its aim was to use art and architecture to create sub-urban interventions within areas experiencing social problems. It was intended these artworks would help to bring people from different ages and cultures together, and create stronger awareness of issues surrounding identity, place and belonging.
Walter and I entered the competition for the Vienna site. After some email exchanges of ideas and drawings, it was decided that since he did not experience a Kiwi “Bach” here in NZ, why not make one in Vienna? I knew the effect that a genuine Bach (as opposed to the often expensive and ostentatious “beach house”) can have on people, and thought the philosophy and methodology of building a Bach could work for this kind of project. The use of local recycled building materials (as in an authentic Bach) could help create relationships within the local community.
Our drawings and ideas were successful in winning the commission for the Sandleiten site in Ottakring, Vienna. It would also become part of the SoHo in Ottakring Biennale, a cultural festival of music, performance and visuals arts supported and funded by the district of Ottakring in Vienna, a working-class area that was known in the 1930’s as “Red Vienna” due to its mayor and council’s support for social housing projects.
In preparation for the project I obtained the financial support of Unitec’s Faculty Research Fund, this enabled not only myself to travel to Austria, but also Master of Design (visual arts) student Fats White. Culburb would provide the accommodation, materials, lunches and some local beers. Other staff members jeweller Ilse-Marie Irl, and designer Simon Gamble provided me with small-scale sculptures to embed into the structure.
Fats is an accomplished ukelele player, as well as an artist and film maker, and could, along with the small sculptures, introduce a uniquely NZ flavour to the project. To ensure the locals in Vienna did not think we were building a replica of an 18th century composer using architectural construction, we had to re-name the project “Baetsch”, as this is the phonetic sound in German closest to our word “Bach”. As it turns out this is highly appropriate as it distinguishes this new European variety from the traditional Kiwi one.
The site in Ottakring was a small park called Nietzchplatz, across a narrow street from a large social housing estate home to an uneasy mix of older local Viennese and new migrant families from Bosnia and Turkey. The park is edged with large trees and frequented by a small group of men who drink around the public seating at one end of the park.
I arrived at the park fresh off a twenty five hour flight, and in 23 degrees and under brilliant blue skies, Walter had already arrived in his little Fiat towing an illegal weight of framing timber. We had decided to construct a simple frame using new timber to ensure structural integrity, and public safety. Onto this would go the old pieces of buildings and interior furniture we hoped the locals would donate. We braced the frame with two sets of old skis to get the ball rolling.
Once we knew our design had been chosen we enlisted the help of Prof. Veronika Kotradyova and some post -graduate students from Bratislava University, an hour away by train. Veronika, a mutual friend, had expressed an interest in using the project as an exercise for her students as they were studying Interior Design and this project would present some significant challenges for them. Vojtech Vlk a Czech photographer and old friend of Walters, was also asked to work as the project documentary photographer. Veronika and the students would prove to be invaluable in the construction process and Vojtech in creating a high quality photographic record.
We placed signs at the entrances of the park and distributed flyers asking for old pieces of furniture and buildings to go towards the construction. At first this was quite slow, and we worried about having to use new materials, but slowly a pile began to emerge and this sent out the signals we wanted. Star of the growing pile was a 15th century iron door from an old church renovation. This was accompanied by an old wooden door, iron shutters, a red vinyl couch-thing, three bed bases and an assortment of objects from the apartments near by.
Once the frame was up the floor was laid using wooden palettes donated by the supermarket across the street. This attracted the first swarm of children on pushbikes and scooters.
A meeting was held with Walter, Veronika and myself with the students from Bratislava sitting in a circle on the new floor visualizing what could be done with this space. We discussed among other things, a design philosophy based on how we would make a building that is both an outside and an inside space, a description used by Unitec Professor and Architect Mike Austin to describe a Bach. From this starting point we established that we would have a wall of doors, a wall of seating, a wall for food and drink and a wall for a sound system, one wall would be symmetrical to offset the chaos we expected.
A meeting was held with Walter, Veronika and myself with the students from Bratislava sitting in a circle on the new floor visualizing what could be done with this space. We discussed among other things, a design philosophy based on how we would make a building that is both an outside and an inside space, a description used by Unitec Professor and Architect Mike Austin to describe a Bach. From this starting point we established that we would have a wall of doors, a wall of seating, a wall for food and drink and a wall for a sound system, one wall would be symmetrical to offset the chaos we expected.
One of interesting things to emerge was that despite the language difficulties we communicated; I spoke no German or Serb, only some of the Slovakian students spoke a little English or German. I worked on the wall of doors with a post-graduate student with no English. There was much gesturing and it must have looked like a bad pantomime, but we managed to solve the problem of how to use a large red chair as a door lintel, and how to hinge iron shutters with bent screws to create a door only children could enter. Fats lead the children’s graffiti corner with bright colours and large black markers, and the building materials kept coming. A snowboard made a perfect bar top and a couple of beds made the wall of seats, the roof was covered with the remains of an inflatable boat.
After three days it was finished and we set up two boards to announce the activities we had planned; two screens made from bed sheets over wooden frames for image projections, a Ukelele concert from Fats, a dance competition for the children and a local DJ concert.
At night the photos taken by Vojtech of the construction and the previous days activities were projected onto the screens, as were images I had taken of baches on Rangitoto Island. We had a generator tucked into bushes some distance away, so we could use a donated mini-cooker to serve Goulash and Glowein from the centre of the Baetsch, which attracted more people, as did the four crates of local “Ottakring” beer we were given to sell over the snowboard bar for a Euro each. Fat’s ukelele playing brought the drinkers from the edges of the park over, one had a guitar and we had an impromptu concert from a man who once had a voice and a talent. Old sofas were placed in cluster next to the wall of seats and every evening it was a wonderful night of music, film, story telling and beers. We wondered why so many eight to twelve year olds were still around at 9.30, but we realized that the parents were quietly sitting on the park seats taking it all in. The older Austrian residents and the young Bosnian and Turkish families all came and mixed using the Baetsch as a conversation starter, fascinated how their junk had been used to make this thing.
Ten days is all we had to make this happen, it was never intended as a permanent structure, and when this time was up we had to explain to the children who were our biggest fans that it was time to pack up. The local authorities would not allow us to keep the Baetsch open to the public without adult supervision. They wanted it boarded up, no one else did. A group of about eight children staged a sit-in and refused to leave, they made protest posters and wrote letters stating their anger at the Baetsch closing.
What we did to get them to leave was to allow the memories to be accessible. We did this by leaving the interior completely intact, removing only the perishables, the old lamps and furniture stayed with a power cord so it could be lit up at nights. We then used five rolls of industrial “Gladwrap” to wrap all but the roof, sealing within the wrap children’s posters and letters, protecting it from the coming autumn and allowing it to become a light sculpture, a glowing mysterious lantern in a darkening park. If you pressed your face to the plastic wrap you could see the warm wood interior with its books, chairs, donated paintings, odd glasses, cups and saucers, just like an old Kiwi bach.
