Mons 2015 - expectations of a ECoC

Less than 24 hours to get immersed in the atmosphere of a ECoC, to get reminded a challenging work moments, to catch up with an old colleague that has become a friend after so many extremely difficult situations.

AEscala presentation in the Pecha-Kucha night at Osthang

Osthang was a great platform to get to know so many people from the world that are interested in similar things as you are and to learn that they are doing also cool stuff. That is why, there were a lot of presentation at the Pecha-Kucha night organized by the Osthang staff. 

It was a great night and there were so many fresh ideas flying in the air. So inspiring!

Here is the presentation I did over the AEscala project. 

I want to give my special thanks to Giorgia Cadeddu for her irreplaceable help in making up the AEscala presentation.

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.

The Osthang Project Summer School

July 2014_Darmstadt, Germany

The Osthang Project Summer School is an international building workshop. Its aim is to discuss the topic of Living Together by Thinking Together and Working Together. The community of workshop participants will live together at the site and will share thoughts and experiences during 21 days. 

Applications for taking part in the workshop should have been on several topics. Although it was insisted that they might be quite Utopian, probably due to my professional experience, my presentation tended to be realistic and to explain the stakeholders and the processes of How Can We Live Together in the (near) future. 

Check out the Osthang Project website!

Application concept sketch_How can we live together?