WDC Pavilion in Rheingau

Dry, Dry, Dry – Constructlab Residency

How can traditional methods of food preservation help address today's questions around sustainability, community, and local resources? With its residency Dry, Dry, Dry, Constructlab transforms the WDC Pavilion in the Rheingau into an open space for shared learning, experimentation, and exchange.

At the heart of the residency are traditional, resource-conscious techniques such as drying and fermenting plants, fruit, and vegetables. Together with visitors, Constructlab explores how local materials can be used and how traditional knowledge can be rediscovered. The residency draws inspiration from the long tradition of shared community infrastructures. In many villages, communal drying houses, mills, and washhouses once served not only practical purposes but also functioned as places for meeting, learning, and sharing. Constructlab builds on this idea of collective making, learning, and exchange.

The Rheingau provides a unique setting for this exploration. While the region attracts large numbers of visitors during the summer months, it becomes noticeably quieter in winter. Constructlab takes this seasonal shift between abundance and stillness as a starting point, asking how the resources of summer can be preserved for the colder season.

Over the course of twelve days, the residency offers a diverse programme of workshops, foraging walks, communal meals, and small celebrations. Visitors and local residents come together to exchange knowledge, learn from one another, and explore sustainable practices of preservation.

The knowledge and techniques developed during each workshop are documented on posters that gradually fill the exterior walls of the pavilion. Over the course of the residency, they grow into a public exhibition that makes the collective learning process visible and shares the knowledge created with all visitors.