The Garden
PROJECT UPDATES
If you ask the first inhabitants of Macondo, who arrived as UN refugees between 1956 and 1975, you get the feeling that it must have been a paradisiacal jungle, a primeval forest – Macondo’s wetlands rich with flora and fauna. In the 60s and 70s, after verbal agreements with the administration, people began to clear brush and plant Gardens, which they’ve continued to nurse and maintain to this day as treasures not only central to their own lives but for the entire neighborhood.
In 2006 the Garden lands acquired - for the first time - the official legal definition of “small garden zone.” Beginning in 2008 the gardens were leased to the inhabitants by the BIG (Bundes Immobilien Gesellschaft). Of the 80 existing gardens, the majority are currently being demolished due to the residents’ inability to afford the new rents.
Cabula6 was able to secure from BIG two plots of vacant land overlooking the soccer field and together with people from the neighborhood, we are building a “Community Garden” which will be available for everyone throughout the course of the project and hopefully longer. In the middle of the Garden we are placing a Cargo container, which we, with residents from Macondo, will convert into a meeting place where different encounters and activities can take place. A “Recycle Garden” has already been set up in an adjacent plot for the collection of raw materials – mostly from the Gardens now being torn down – for re-use in building the joint Garden.
The Garden and Container will serve as the basis for:
- A neighborhood “Café” – where people can sit together over coffee tea and pastries. A place for informal meeting and exchange of information. A place to chill out.
- Macondo Cinema – across the soccer field from the Garden is the corrugated tin wall separating Macondo from the Metro Shopping Center parking lot. We will place a rear-projection movie screen at the wall high enough to be seen from both sides – the garden and the parking lot. Once a week we will screen films. For those wishing to watch from their cars, we will broadcast the soundtracks through a pirate radio transmitter, so it can be heard over the car radio. Otherwise, the film can be watched from chairs set up in the soccerfield and Garden.
- Workshops – ranging from music workshops with Mamadou Diabate and Mani Obeya to Afghani women’s meetings organized and run by people in the neighborhood.
- Exhibitions – about the ongoing projects or other important themes which arise.
- A Garden – where people can plant, tend, nurse and enjoy.
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The word ‘paradise’, from the old Persian, Pardeiza, meaning a ‘a wall around’ describes an enclosed space. In origin it was probably a walled or fenced hunting park, used to make collections of exotic plants, animals and trees.