An urban courtyard is often a shady, heavily used, but still neglected place. Due to industrialization and the shortage of living space, block perimeter development emerged in the mid-19th century. With this development, tall city houses formed enclosed urban canyons, and with the increasing number of floors, the courtyards became ever shadier.
Due to the well-preserved buildings from the Wilhelminian era, a large part of Leipzig’s residents live in houses with such courtyards. Over the past decades, these have been repeatedly renovated, bricked up, clad, or provisionally beautified. They are places for social exchange among neighbors but also an architectural free space. They are sites of social control and venues for neighborhood conflicts. In the courtyard, people play, grill, discuss, laugh, steal, and vandalize. Our courtyard, our stage, is meant to reflect exactly that: An urban melting pot.
