The Werkstadthaus Tübingen is part of the neighborhood „Französisches Viertel“ in Tübingen.
It was built at the very time the former French military-caserns were transformed into a lively neighborhood. It was and is pioneer in making the vision of „living together“ reality. „Living together“ as in sharing a house and sharing a life, sharing ressources and knowledge.
To the people who founded the Werkstadthaus the idea of sharing a house meant that they would design and build it together – as a „Baugruppe“. But they not only wanted a house for themselves but for the whole neighborhood. So they not only built living quarters, but also workshops (wood, bike, textile, ceramics, metal…) and added rooms for people to meet, celebrate, make music or art or do whatever the need is in a neighborhood. All that with the wish to to it in a oecological, fair and ressource-friendly way.
That history of the Werkstadthaus is still very much alive today. All members of the team work in that spirit: we are experts of the alternative forms of living in the neighborhood and partly know them from our own individual history as we were part of Baugruppen or lived in the Wagenburg. Our very interest as Werkstadthaus is to actively take part in forming and planning the neighborhood and create spaces for others to do the same.
Because of that and our long history we are often asked to give tours through the neighborhood. We tell stories only „insiders“ can tell, we arrange meetings with residents…. Groups want to learn from us on various levels: about architecture and city-planning (the actual stones and houses and streets…), about the „living together“ (how do we do it and does it actually work) and of course about ways of sharing ressources (Reparaturcafé, Upcycling, Bike-Sharing, Workshop-Sharing, Gardening….).
So: we are experts in being cooper-actif. Active in Cooperating, active in sharing with more than 17 of forming our knowledge.