It's a great development for us that the House of One is not only being built in Berlin,
but has also received a worldwide response since the architecture competition.
In 2015, the three clergymen of the inter-religious platform in Bangui received the Aachen Peace Prize.
And they became aware of the House of One there.
And the wish arose that kind of a House of One should also be built in Bangui.
Of course, this is a great cooperation for us.
It's another continent. It's a completely different constellation in another country.
And we are reflecting together, for three years now:
How could such a building be constructed, what do you have to consider?
How can we develop a deep partnership with each other?
To develop a similar constellation there in the CAR as well.
That is what has been driving us for three years now.
I would say that this project reveals a very important character.
Because this project allows to capitalise all the efforts
that already have started through religious leaders to bring back the peace in the Central African Republic.
The House of Peace and Religions is an extremely ambitious project.
On different levels.
Not only because there is civil war in the Central African Republic and
it may seem presumptuous to build a building there now.
But also because, of course, such a House of Peace - there is actually nothing like it in the world.
And it is the question of how such a house could look like at all.
And as architects, we naturally ask ourselves various questions.
It's about typologies, it's about "What's going to happen there? And how can this be expressed in a building?“
Well, our role, our participation for this project "House of Peace and Religions of the Central African Republic".
It’s up to us to make a premise.
That means that we have to unite our students with the students of the University of Weimar,
to start a competition for ideas among the students
that are at the base of the future of a certain amount of things,
that will produce an architectural project that will be used as a pormis or professional base,
keeping in sight, to elaborate and to reach for the goals set by the wing of architects, in the line of the project,
even as all the teams of the platform which want a long-lasting peace in the Central African Republic that lasts.
So of course this is a process that we are doing in cooperation
between the two universities of Weimar and Lomé.
And the special thing about it is that we in Weimar... we could only fail being on our own.
Because, of course, we come as outsiders and don't know what is actually going on in the country.
And the University of Lomé - that's where you study when you come from Central Africa -
of course they have a knowledge of what's there.
And we want to enter into dialogue, we want our students to design together.
This means that they give each other criticisms, that they exchange ideas.
I would like to remind you once more, the road towards the goal belongs to the game.
And I’m hopeful that this project will bring in sight, to enable, to give an impulse
to what we concretely want from the peace project in the Central African Republic.
