Designed as a “city within a city”, the “Ihme-Zentrum” residential, office and commercial building in Hanover is the largest concrete foundation in Europe. The premises of a former shopping center in the Ihme-Zentrum have been vacant for several years.
At the invitation of the state capital of Hanover, members of UVM developed the concept “Invest Inn: es rechnet sich” together with endboss. In addition to an artistic utilization program and a strategy for cooperative planning, the concept includes a financing plan and key spatial and design ideas.
The Ihme-Zentrum, owned by the Luxembourg-based Civitas Property Group S.A. and its associated project company Projekt IZ Hannover GmbH, is part of the opaque network of companies owned by investor Lars Windhorst.
Our 10-year pilot project gives the owner of the Ihme Center a unique opportunity to contribute to the community in a lucrative way and to give something back to the city society from which he benefits directly and indirectly.
Under the title “Invest INN”, an area in the Ihme Center is to be developed and used by various cultural actors – based on the structural and ideal principle of art in architecture.
In this case, it must now logically and due to the circumstances be called “art on the investment object” (KI for short). By KI we mean an obligation on the part of the owner of an exposed property to use a certain proportion – usually around 1% – of the investment costs for works of art. While an art percentage is usually used to realize works of art primarily intended for viewing on a building site or within the premises, the Ihme Center has chosen a different approach. As part of the AI, “Invest INN” is developing an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary art and culture program that is applied, research-based and experimental in equal measure. The aim is to establish a real laboratory at the hitherto little-explored interface between artistic and urban practice with a model character – both with regard to a future form of returning private profit to the public and with regard to the development of new forms of process-based urban development. We believe that it makes sense to extend the artistic practice, research and program to an urban practice, research and thematic setting due to the overall location and building-specific situation of the project. The almost unavoidable cultural valorization of the object in these and other contexts is thus enriched and critically accompanied by insights and strategies of urban research.
The “Invest INN” offers space for innovative artistic and urban research and poses the question of possibilities for public welfare-oriented investment practice.