Report: The Small Miracle of Mannheim Spinelli – Participatory Student Building Project in Mannheim
The Multihalle pavilion designed by Carlfried Mutschler, Joachim Langner, and Frei Otto for the 1975 Federal Garden Exhibition (“Bundesgartenschau”) was quickly dubbed the “miracle of Mannheim.” While a major initiative is currently underway to preserve the wood lattice gridshell structure that is pegged for demolition by the Mannheim city council, in 2016 another small architectural miracle occurred in the same city. A group of 18 architecture students from the Kaiserslautern Technical University designed and built a community center at the Spinelli refugee camp – together with 25 refugees. The result is a decidedly simple yet wonderfully refined wooden structure. And the entire process, from initial sketches to completion, took less than eight months.
