With new standards and functionalization, the International Style of the nineteen twenties made building faster and cheaper while simultaneously also bringing forth such individual buildings as Haus Lange and Haus Esters. Constructed for two prosperous families and outfitted with the noblest of building materials, the claim to the perpetuity of the material and the generosity of the spaces is hardly compatible with the current conception of dwelling. Present day living is supposed to be compact, functional, modular and temporary—furniture as well as living space are becoming ever more mobile.

The flexibility and mobility of our society demands such a life model that is exemplarily reflected out the rapidity of social media. In Act 2, the artists Didier Fiúza Faustino, Andreas Schmitten and Andrea Zittel focus attention on flexible structures and mobile aspects of cohabitation. In the process, they will touch on utopian as well as dystopian points of view, thus forming a hinge between the two major themes of Alternatives for Living. Their site-specific works are situated in transitional zones, in the garden and the garden house—threshold areas where the public and the private flow into each other.