Positions

Pro­gressive Pro­vince: The future lies in the coun­tryside

What is possible even when there is large-scale migration from the countryside and everyday life is characterized by vacancy and stagnation? An interview with town developer, visionary and ex-journalist Frederik Fischer, who has been breathing new life into the countryside for years.

in October 2024

Fre­derik, with Neu­landia and the Summer of Pio­neers, you have been pro­moting the idea of living and working in the coun­tryside for years, pri­marily in eastern Germany. What has been your expe­rience, and what success can you see?

The most important thing I have learned is that you really can achieve a great deal in rural areas. That politics can be shaped there, can be expe­ri­enced directly, and that it also ‘pays off’ for poli­ti­cians. Whereas on the big poli­tical stage, you tend to get the impression that no matter what you do, you’ll always get shot down, figu­ra­tively speaking of course.

We expe­rience things dif­fer­ently in rural areas: poli­ti­cians who really get totally involved in a project, who pursue a vision and see it imple­mented. That doesn’t go down well with everyone locally, but it does with the majority.

A spe­cific example: the mayor of Wie­senburg, with whom I have just had a long con­ver­sation, described very well how he himself has learned an incre­dible amount through his col­la­bo­ration on the KoDorf [ approx. Coope­rative Village].

On the one hand tech­ni­cally, for example with regard to urban land-use planning or pro­ce­dures regarding con­s­truction law, but also stra­te­gi­cally – how important public rela­tions work is, how important good rela­ti­onships with funding pro­viders are, simply poli­tical lob­bying: net­works in the creative scene, in urban areas. It was really nice to see how he described a ‘learning journey’. And above all, with a happy ending. He has now been re-elected and can confirm that local work is being rewarded. You have also just seen that in the ZDF docu­mentary.

What actually prompted you, as a media scholar and eco­nomist, to devote yourself to this par­ti­cular topic??

I left tra­di­tional jour­nalism imme­diately after my studies and trai­neeship and founded my first media start-up. With an acce­le­rator pro­gramme, we were able to move to Silicon Valley and became a partner of Twitter.

In San Fran­cisco, I expe­ri­enced a kind of home­l­essness and neglect that was uni­ma­gi­nable in Germany at the time. Com­pared to the housing crisis, the tech start-ups with their often cynical business models seemed incre­asingly unin­te­resting to me.

But I am still enthu­si­astic about inno­vation. Now it is the so-called social inno­vation that moti­vates me. And the social aspect is really what fasci­nates me most about archi­tecture. Good archi­tecture can make an important con­tri­bution to a func­tioning com­munity.

Can you give us an example of what can ideally change in a com­munity in just a few years?

The good news first: a great deal. I would like to mention Wit­ten­berge as an example. We orga­nised the first Summer of Pio­neers there in 2019. At the time, the town was the epitome of a loser of reuni­fi­cation. Almost all of the major indus­trial com­panies had closed within a few years of reuni­fi­cation. Forty per cent of the popu­lation had left. The vacancy rate was enormous.

The Summer of Pio­neers and the wide­spread media coverage of the project, as well as the dedi­cated work of the admi­nis­tration, the Pio­neers and the civilian popu­lation, changed the mood.

The Pio­neers revived vacant pro­perties, launched par­ti­ci­patory pro­jects and brought artists into the city. Some Pio­neers formed a kind of wel­coming agency – the Elb­land­werker [Workers in the River Elbe coun­tryside]. In coope­ration with the housing asso­ciation, they offer guest apart­ments and help people to settle in the area. The ori­ginal 18 Pio­neers who stayed have since grown into a com­munity of almost 400 people, who are also actively involved in urban deve­lo­pment.

Num­erous follow-up pro­jects have brought new players and several million euros in funding to the city. The most recent deve­lo­pment in this positive trend is the decision by the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infra­structure to locate the Small Town Academy in Wit­ten­berge. The project will receive ten million euros over five years and is intended to support the deve­lo­pment of small towns throughout Germany.

The Neu­landia team has recently grown… that looks like big plans for the future. What are you going to tackle next?

Our approach works. After five years, we can really prove that very well. That moti­vates me to follow the path we have taken. In the future, however, I would like to focus even more on inno­vative solu­tions for existing buil­dings. New con­s­truction is curr­ently pro­hi­bi­tively expensive – espe­cially if you want to build in an eco­lo­gi­cally and socially respon­sible way.

We are always looking for impact investors and foun­da­tions that are inte­rested in working with us. I am sure that we are working on one of the central issues of our time. The housing crisis brings ever­y­thing tog­ether: ecology, economy, politics and society. Solu­tions to the housing crisis the­r­efore always solve a multitude of pro­blems at the same time. This is exactly what makes dealing with the topic so exciting and relevant.

What spe­cific role can archi­tecture play in your plans?

I am neither reli­gious nor spi­ritual. Besides music, for me archi­tecture is the only source of tran­s­cen­dental expe­rience. Not least thanks to HOLIDAYARCHITECTURE and having the good fortune to be able to live in a his­to­rical garden city, I have been able to enjoy and compare out­standing archi­tecture not only as an observer but also as a resident (albeit a tem­porary one).

I am always amazed at how suc­cessful design can trigger fee­lings of hap­piness and, con­versely, how soulless design can imme­diately make me sad. Suc­cessful design does not neces­s­arily have to require opu­lence and expensive mate­rials. At the risk of sounding a little spi­ritual: it is the ‘soul’ of rooms and buil­dings that determine their quality. In addition to archi­tecture, sto­rytelling also plays a major role here. This is where I see the con­tri­bution I can make as a non-spe­cialist.

You have tra­velled around Europe with HOLIDAYARCHITECTURE many times. How do you expe­rience our partners and their houses?

For many years, my wife and I have been spending almost all of our holidays in the holiday homes you have curated. We have never been dis­ap­pointed. I find it par­ti­cu­larly luxu­rious when we are able to talk to the owners or archi­tects them­selves.

There is one expe­rience I would like to high­light. In Porto (which I would recommend to all lovers of archi­tecture anyway), we stayed at the Na Tra­vessa Suites, which I highly recommend. The hostess Mariana was incre­dibly wel­coming to us and our daughter. She asked in advance what our daughter likes and orga­nised appro­priate toys that were already in the room when we arrived. We imme­diately took a liking to her and the com­munity-based concept of this house.

We also had the pleasure of staying in a house designed by Pritzker Prize winner Souto de Moura in Porto. Through de Moura, I became aware of his teacher Alvaro Siza. Both have per­ma­nently changed my view of archi­tecture.

Often, HOLIDAYARCHITECTURE is where our holiday planning starts. The desti­nation is arbi­trary. The house is the focus. In this way, we have tra­velled to many places that we would otherwise never have visited.

Which initia­tives and places should we defi­nitely remember, even apart from Neu­landia?

Inno­vative approaches can be found, for example, at the Überland [Overland] Fes­tival Görlitz. Overall, the tireless work of the Federal Foun­dation for Building Culture is important. What also impresses me again and again is the active civil culture in Mitt­weida. Not to for­getting the initiative Non­conform, which not only creates archi­tecture but also par­ti­ci­patory spaces of oppor­tunity. The Viel­leben [Many Lives] coope­rative, with which we are deve­loping the KoDörfer, also deserves attention. I could con­tinue the list for a very long time. There are countless orga­ni­sa­tions, initia­tives and people who are setting new stan­dards and driving change far away from the metro­po­lises.

Per­sonal details

Fre­derik Fischer grew up in a village, spent his childhood in a small town and then went out into the big wide world. He studied media studies and eco­nomics in Hanover, Aarhus, Ams­terdam, London and Washington, and co-founded several start-ups in Berlin. However, he is now con­vinced that the most exciting designs of the future are being created in the pro­vinces. He has been con­sis­t­ently pro­moting this for years, among other things, as managing director of Neu­landia – in par­ti­cular with the resi­dency project ‘Summer of Pio­neers’ and the garden city-ori­ented KoDorf neigh­bourhood deve­lo­p­ments.

Interview: Ulrich Stefan Knoll

Picture credits: © Fini Ludwig (cover picture), Wie­senburg, © Melanie Adloff (1), KoDorf Wie­senburg, © agmm Archi­tekten (2, 4, 5), aerial view KoDorf Wie­senburg, © Uwe Man­teuffel (3), Summer of Pio­neers Grabow, © Britta Liermann and Veit Grünert /Bureau Now (6 — 12), Visit by Federal Minister of Eco­nomics Robert Habeck to the Summer of Pio­neers in Grabow, © Fre­derik Fischer (13, 14), Na Tra­vessa Suites, © José Campos (15 — 18), Casa1015, © Tiago Casanova (19 — 21), Federal Minister of Building Klara Geywitz and the Bau­kultur Foun­dation visiting the Wit­ten­berge Small Town Academy, © Fre­derik Fischer (22), Fre­derik Fischer, © Martin Gommel (23)