Van Bo Le-Mentzel

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Van Bo Le-Mentzel on a "Hartz IV armchair" during the See-Conference 2015

Van Bo Le-Mentzel (born February 18, 1977 in Laos ; originally Le Jumbo Jet ) is a German architect of Laotian origin. He became known for the design of the " Hartz IV furniture" for self-construction at low cost. In 2015 he was visiting professor at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts .

Life

Van Bo Le-Mentzel came to Germany with his parents from Laos in 1979 and grew up in Berlin-Wedding , where he attended the Humboldthain primary school. Later he worked in Berlin under the name "Prime Lee" as a rapper and graffiti artist and studied architecture at the Beuth University of Applied Sciences in Berlin . In 2010, the young and unemployed architect Van Bo Le-Mentzel completed a weekend carpentry course at the Berlin Adult Education Center . This craft experience inspired him to design a furniture collection himself. His first design was the so-called “24 Euro Chair”. The models for its design were design work by the Dutch group De Stijl and in the German Bauhaus , for example by Gerrit Rietveld , Mies van der Rohe , Marcel Breuer and Erich Dieckmann .

Projects

Hartz IV furniture

Van Bo Le-Mentzel assembling a "Hartz IV armchair"

Van Bo Le-Mentzel developed a furniture collection that now consists of a chair, armchair, sofa bed, shelf and table. In 2010 Van Bo Le-Mentzel presented his 21 square meter "Hartz IV apartment" at the International Design Festival (DMY) in Berlin.

100 euro apartment

His project “100 Euro Apartment” is a residential unit that is a tiny house and is intended to serve as part of a communal living space that he calls “Co-Being House”. People should live together under one roof in individual apartments, of which the smallest should only cost 100 euros rent per month. The 6.4 m² small apartment on a trailer includes a kitchen, bathroom, office, bedroom and living room. In the “Co-Being House” people with little money should also be able to live in the city center.

Bauhaus Campus Berlin

From March 10, 2017 to March 9, 2018, Van Bo curated the “Bauhaus Campus Berlin” on the open-air site in front of the Bauhaus-Archiv Museum of Design in Berlin's Tiergarten district . The project should be an artistic experiment under the motto “Study. Build. Research. ”And creating opportunities for democratic utopias for people with and without German citizenship. Actors from design, culture, science, business and the startup scene studied and researched on a temporary campus. All the projects involved were organized in the Tiny House Movement , which deals with mobile architectures that are generally no larger than a parking lot, i.e. 10 m². The model for this experiment is the Bauhaus as a school institution in which education and building were rethought 100 years ago.

Open Academy Of The Fine Hearts

As a visiting professor at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts, he symbolically re-established the university with students as the Open Academy of the Fine Hearts . Since Le-Mentzel financed his teaching assignment through crowdfunding , he gave the income from his professorship to the students. The courses were open to the public and characterized by dialogue and initiative, a process that Le-Mentzel described as "crowducation". Special attention was given the procedure because it to promote the initiative was evaluated as "1.0" in the outset to all students.

other projects

The architect is involved in various projects. He is co-founder of the Berlin association “Kiez-Tank-Stelle”, which organizes so-called “Schooltalks”. Interesting personalities are invited to the schools to tell the young people how they managed to get ahead in life despite the poor starting conditions.

With the motto “Construct instead of Consumption”, Van Bo Le-Mentzel wants to motivate people with little money but a sense of style to lend a hand. Van Bo Le-Mentzel lived on government support for a while and experimented with self-made furniture during this time. The architect sends out his construction plans on request and in return asks to report on how the project went.

reception

In contrast to the numerous positive responses, the Junge Welt polemical criticism of Van Bo Le-Menzel and accused him of having "cynically 'generated' his social advancement from the politically forced social decline of thousands upon thousands, as they say today." Author Eike Stedefeldt countered the 21 m² of the "Hartz IV apartment" from 2010 with the minimum size of 28 m² for a new apartment in the GDR . In addition, he compared the average rent of a 30 m² apartment in Berlin of 12.08 EUR / m² or 12.22 EUR / m² in Kreuzberg in the 2017 rent index with an arithmetical 15.63 EUR / m² at 6.4 square meters for the "100- Euro apartment ".

Awards

  • ZeitWISSEN Prize Courage to Sustainability (2015)
  • Bayreuth Model Prize of the bayreuther dialoge the future forum for economy, philosophy and society (2015)

Works

  • The Little Professor: 34 things my son taught me about life, love and the world. Ecowin, Wals 2016, ISBN 978-3-7110-5171-4
  • as editor (with Birgit S. Bauer): Hartz IV Moebel.com. Build more, buy less! Construct instead of consume. Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern 2012, ISBN 978-3-7757-3395-3
  • With Silke Helfrich : The architect Van Bo Le-Mentzel lives openness, commons and unconditional basic work. In: Silke Helfrich, David Bollier and Heinrich Böll Foundation (ed.): The world of the Commons. Pattern of joint action. transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2015, ISBN 978-3-8376-3245-3 ( available online ).

literature

Web links

Commons : Van Bo Le-Mentzel  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Bauhaus design for Hartz IV recipients? Art (magazine) , June 8, 2011, archived from the original on October 28, 2017 ; accessed on March 26, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Susanne Lenz: Van Bo Le-Mentzel. The professor who gives every student an A. In: Berliner Zeitung. January 2, 2015, accessed April 23, 2019 .
  3. ↑ "I imagine Berlin as a playground". Die Tageszeitung , June 7, 2010, accessed on March 29, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Open Design City feat. Le Van Bo. DMY International Design Festival, archived from the original on August 29, 2014 ; accessed on March 29, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Dieter Kassel: Architects are looking for ideas against a lack of space. Interview. Deutschlandradio Kultur , March 10, 2017, accessed on March 26, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Van Bo Le-Mentzel. In: re: publica - The most inspiring Festival for the Digital Society. Retrieved April 23, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Reinhard Kahl: Learning through the crowd. In: FUTURZWEI.org. Sustainability Foundation, March 11, 2019, accessed on April 23, 2019 .
  8. ↑ Le Van Bo. Kultur-im-quartier.de, archived from the original on April 19, 2011 ; accessed on March 26, 2019 .
  9. ↑ Van Bo Le-Mentzel: Hartz IV furniture construction. April 23, 2011, archived from the original on July 24, 2012 ; accessed on March 26, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Eike Stedefeldt: Never ask Ms. Annemarie! Junge Welt , March 17, 2017, accessed March 26, 2019 .
  11. ^ The 2015 winners. Accessed August 20, 2019 .
  12. ↑ Bayreuth Model Prize. In: bayreuther dialoge 2019. Retrieved on August 20, 2019 (American English).
personal data
SURNAME Le-Mentzel, Van Bo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Le, Van Bo; Le, Jumbo Jet (original name); Prime (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German architect of Laotian origin
DATE OF BIRTH 18th February 1977
PLACE OF BIRTH Laos