No. 19 - 10 Jahres Ausgabe, Lech & Zürs

Very early on, in the year 2000, Gerold and Katia Schneider
founded a small culture initiative in Lech that sees itself as a
trans-disciplinary thinking space and forum for discussion.
La Loupe asked Katia and Gerold Schneider to talk about the
motivation, history, and future of their initiative:
Kunst & Kultur
“The idea for allmeinde commongrounds as a cultural
initiative is much older than its name. It has been
with me since my early days as a student where it
not at all clear that I would one day end up taking
over my parents’ farm Almhof. The idea stemmed
from an early need for orientation and reflexion
through dialogue, not least from the utopia of designing
one’s living space together – something I feel
strongly connected to.
Thinking about one’s own living space, the community
of others, seemed like quite a plausible task for
my life. Together with Katia the project of “a house
for the Alps” first came into existence through her
thesis in 1994 in Paris. The ideas we developed as part
of this thesis basically contain everything that still
moves us today. We changed the name to allmeinde
(the English counterpart to commongrounds) thanks
to a friend: he pointed us in the direction of Ivan
Illich’s work “The right to conviviality”.
With the unexpected return to my home, the focal
areas of our work ended up moving strongly towards
hotel and architecture. We always thought “dialogue
needs a (physical) space”. Which is why, back in
2000, the first construction phase of the allmeinde
barn in a “disused stable” began.
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