STATISTA: Towards a Statecraft of the Future

The fate of Berlin’s Haus der Statistik (HdS) seemed to have been decided. Built by a collective of architects in the 1960s to house the former communist German Democratic Republic’s (GDR) office of statistics at Alexanderplatz, the heart of GDR’s capital, it was meant to be demolished to make way for a new commercial structure. Yet in September 2015, the Berlin Alliance of Artists’ Studios Under Threat initiated an art intervention at HdS, unfolding a giant banner covering most of the building’s main facade, and the opening of a new public centre for all manner of social, cultural purposes in the building was publicly announced. The happening was essentially symbolic as the demolition of HdS had long since been approved. Yet within only a few years it turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Today, the HdS is a unique pioneering project collectively defined and steered by a broad coalition of actors in the interests of collaborative urban development. STATISTA, one of the art projects that has its base at HdS, explores how a cooperative urban development guided by common welfare could work on a long-term perspective. This book offers an insight into STATISTA and the events in and around HdS since 2015, aiming also to encourage artists and activists to emulate ideas and start to their own projects elsewhere. Text in English and German. 57 colour, 28 b/w illustrations