Let’s travel to germany to meet the architectural practice Heide von Beckerath, today represented by Verena von Beckerath.  

Housing has been a never-ending topic in their practice. “When we started working with collective housing projects it was something new. (…) lately,I found out, collective housing is something that everyone is talking about”.

They are not claiming to be the pioneers of the attention now being given to the housing issue. However, they have long been aware that certain aspects have either never been applied to housing or have been forgotten in the discussion. Using their words:  “Its not something that we have invented, its something that is there but maybe has never been applied to housing in that way.”

Sometimes “a single word can change the acceptance of an architecture approach.”

Sometimes, its not very clear who has to water the plants.

Every time, “as architects, we always have to be a little ahead of things.”

“Housing…I mean…this is probably what we have to do in the next years.

But this does not mean that there is change in what we see that is built.

That is the next step.”

Guest: Verena von Beckerath + Tim Heide, Heide von Beckerath (DE)

Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)

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CREDITS

Two Houses

2019, 38 min

Director: Verena von Beckerath

Assistant directors: Niklas Fanelsa, Momoko Yasaka, Maximilian von Zepelin

Camera, Sound, Editing: Jens Franke

Produced by: Bauhaus-Universität Weimar

Verena von Beckerath (ed.), A Room with a View, Monroe Books, Berlin 2023

with contributions by Andrew Alberts, Ludovico Centis, Lawrence Hoque, Albrecht Kastein, Oda Pälmke and Yvonne Matijas Seguso