#floatinguniversity

From May to September 2018 Raumlabor created a offshore laboratory for collective and experimental learning in a concrete rainwater basin right next to the Tempelhof airfield in Berlin. Our dear colleague and photographer Denis Esakov visited the location for a better view. 

The campus was organized across the whole basin on a variety of platforms.  Runways over the water connect to other satellites – classrooms, workshops, toilets, the kitchen, the auditorium, the bar and the laboratory tower – spread like a space station in orbit.

A water wheel helped the water circulating, flowing through plant filters, biofilm filters, mushroom filters, sand filters, Mantra-singing filters, gemstone and swirl-filters, along with spiritual guidance and critical dialog.

On this third landscape on the verge of disappearance, a generic structure was constructed for performing the knowledge transfers from students, artist and scientist from more than twenty international universities all over the world. 

In the center of the space station rises the laboratory tower with a water filtration system laid out on multiple levels.

Together, they research and investigate the daily routines and practices of urban living and formulate visions and ideas for a better future city. 

A multi-story construction, the “Urban Forest”, designed by the bow WOW for the exhibition “ Wohnungsfrage” at ‘Haus der Kulturen der Welt’, was one of the campus – satellites.

Throughout the whole semester of Floating University the place was adapted as a research and experimentation hub for possible water filtration strategies for rain and greywater.

The territory around the rainwater basin is looking for contemporary, resilient forms of urban practice with a visionary focus on an unknown future.

Floating University

It is truly amazing what networks of knowledge and idiosyncrasies can do for one’s development as a practitioner. Recently, I have been exposed to a series of ways of working through symposium events and lectures. The most relevant one to this post would be the talk given by Daniel Cherney, a product designer a curator and an educator, founder of the initiative FIXPERTS.

According to their website, Fixperts is a learning programme that challenges young people to use their imagination and skills to create ingenious solutions to everyday problems for a real person. In the process, they develop a host of valuable transferable skills from prototyping to collaboration. Fixperts offers a range of teaching formats to suit schools and universities, from hour-long workshops, to a term-long project, relevant to any creative design, engineering and STEM/STEAM studies. FixEd is the think-and-do tank concerned with inspiring and equipping creative, ingenious and generous problem-solvers around the world (especially, though not exclusively, Fixperts).

Thinking about the current categorisations of ‘design’, ‘making’, ‘craft’ and other similar terminology relevant to the act of producing something with a set of skills, or ethos or education, it is important that we distinguish what it is of this chart which we value, and if we really understand the importance of its permanence and transmission for our future.

Because, can we envision a future with no space for making? Could we survive it without removing the spine of individual and collective critical thought?

As someone who is constantly struggling to define what my label is, and in a constant internal debate between self-definition and media agnostic practice, I found his way of focusing on ‘making’ clear, simple and masterful as well as tailored to each individual. Daniel pinpointed exactly what I and anyone  should keep in mind when doing just about any project;

-Where do you want to see change?

-What is your entry point?

Why you apply ‘design’ and how are crucial questions and defining aspects of your interaction with it and the world.  I found it particularly inspirational that Daniel’s background lies in technical engineering, product design, and most importantly education. Through curating exhibitions for his students he then curated a non-commercial interdisciplinary space at the Aram Galler, where he came across a new way that he could effect change in an area he feels strongly about as a practitioner and deeply cares as an individual.  Improving the future by giving kids the tools and skills to think creatively and use design thinking to foment a renewed and healthy making environment.

This became his ‘area of desired change’ and his training, his teaching and curation the way he produced change, his entry point.

Copy and paste these simple questions, and find yourself someone in need or an issue you feel strongly about, a team to help and you have yourself the formula to be part of change! Junko’s bulleting board tool is just one of the many solutions that the world is in need of, and harnessing our skills and applying them collaboratively to solve a communal issue is in fact as old as society!

I am deeply impressed and inspired by the worldwide network of individuals that are touched on a daily base by the principles of their project. Fixperts has become more than a centralised and local initiative, transcending into a translocal collaborative think tank, which promotes and exercises a dialogical process between design and people. Their archives of videos are in constant expansion and new tools for the next team to research and feel inspired by. As a result of the talk, I have offered to volunteer to organise and update this archive as I'm very compelled to become a part of this network, and there is no better place to start small but in a deep immersion of the outcomes of social design!