Osthang with Collectif Etc

Kitchen (collectif ETC)

The tasks of the team were to build up the kitchen area and to cook lunch and dinner for everybody. This was the team I was taking part in. The Kitchen Team was divided in 4 smaller groups, composed of 1 to 3 tutors and 3-4 students and we were rotating of 2 days of building, 1 day of cooking and 1 day off.  

Programme. The Kitchen Area was composed of a place for washing the dishes, a cooking area and a working area. Of course, there were planned also a storage place and several chill-out terraces, as the already-built Kiosk had to be integrated. The complex kitchen zone was developed by modules on a grid of 2,40 x 2,40m. 

The Osthang Project - Conclusions

The Osthang Project Summer School in Darmstadt was a great experience for me, and for sure, for the other participants, too. It was conceptualized as an Experimental Building Workshop, curated by Jan Liesegang (raumlaborberlin), but it also opened a discussion about what a community is nowadays and how we can live together. 

www.osthang-project.org

The social experiment of Living Together (“in a bubble”) was quite successful. I was really surprised that unknown people could contact so easily and become so close in days. It might be because of the lack of internet connection in the beginning, so that everybody could talk with and get to know everybody. The second very important reason was that (almost) all daily activities were concentrated in one place and there was no need to go out of the construction and living site. All basic facilities were there and moreover, we were building and improving them day by day. The hard weather circumstances in the beginning made us even more determined to collaborate with each other so that the work could go on in the best possible way.

Student Participatory Initiatives. Comparison

This summer I took part in the Osthang Project together with other 60 participants and around 30 tutors. During the same dates there were other similar (building) experimentations I was interested in, but unfortunately, I couldn´t participate. But my curiosity of how they were working made me compare them in diverse aspects.

It seems that such building initiatives in public spaces are quite common and they aim the re-activation of the space, but do they really achieve such a goal? Aren´t they too short in time to achieve a real re-use of the space? What is the role of the students that arrive from abroad to the certain spot and context? Could they really feel the atmosphere of the place and react by building an object to the current needs of the local population? What is the role of the neighbours that will use the public space/object - visitors or participants? Is it possible to intervene with local small businesses and are these initiatives beneficial for them? and many other questions. Some of them were discussed during the Osthang Project in Darmstadt.

Also I could visit Villena for a day and talk to tutors and organizers of elCASC where I received a lot of precious information and good vibes from the participants and the neighbours.