Susanne Stauch

social.transformation.system.design.research

REGENERATE ! – Fluid Community Food Systems. Interdisciplinary Project with Wajukuu Arts Project, Kenya and the Department of Architecture, UdK, Berlin

 „Cities have a crucial role to play as catalysts of the system change we need. They can embody a new story about development and progress in which the health of biodiversity, foodsheds and watersheds are key indicators of success. A city is most healthy as a meeting place for change agents, outliers, and shadow networks. The healthy city is about participation, not spectacle. Connecting is itself a form of innovation.“ John Thackara

By acknowledging the city as a living system where things grow organically, offering a new human centered fluidity, we will approach its territories as a fertile ground for community regeneration and a healthy (fair, resilient, circular, sustainable) local food system, while  understanding ourselves as agents of change by designing and producing genuine urban abundance.

This living city is already emerging with new kinds of infrastructures: food coops, collective urban gardening and farming, craft breweries etc. We will kick off the semester with a Berlin wide field research, exploring and identifying key elements for local food systems in a community context (production, transformation, distribution, consumption). We will visit and interview grass roots initiatives, start-ups, farmers, community gardens, local producers etc., cook and eat together, explore the different set-ups of community and share it all in a collective map, which will be the starting point for the semester project.

Inspired by emerging disciplines like permaculture, transition and regenerative design, the goal of this project is to experience a socially engaged design practice and to establish a systemic understanding of the topic by investigating different scenarios: we will work with an allotment garden and analyze its specific structures and rules and how these shape its community; we will explore the potential of the „house of statistics“ at Alexanderplatz, a building and space whose purpose still needs to be defined and we will address our thinking towards the very special constraints of the slums in Nairobi and its consequences for community purposes.

The systemic approach will allow us to think at different scales (Berlin/Nairobi) and help us to decolonize knowledge (and design) and to understand, how we can share knowledge and resources in fairer, healthier way.

We will approach these scenarios with questions like:
– How to propose new food products & service systems (PPS) that regenerate local economies as well as communities?
– How to use mobile & lean structures to establish resilient and circular food systems that will not be affected by politics, real estate speculation etc.?
– How to help people to take back the city by establishing shared food production/transformation/systems?

with Virginie Gailing, Prof. Markus Bader,St. Oberholz, KDI, Barefoot Solutions, NGO Nyendo, Edgeryders’ OpenVillage

get more information on the website

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Berlin Design Digest – Essay & Project

To celebrate the ten-year anniversary of UNESCO naming Berlin a “City of Design”, the editors Robert Eysoldt, a strategic and creative consultant, and Raban Ruddigkeit, a designer and editor, have assembled 100 successful projects, products, and processes by 75 Berlin agencies, design labs, public initiatives, networks, and universities, which currently connect Berlin with the world in “The Berlin Design Digest”, published by Slanted.

I am very honored to not only present “The ShitShow”, one of 6 unconventional projects that were developed during the Hacking Utopia project at UdK, but also having been invited to write an essay about a topic I think to be relevant in the current design debate. The text reflects the contemporality of the ever so famous design thinking framework and demands for the design community to step up and reclaim their expertise, while adjusting the creative innovation processes to the current needs of a world in crisis, including self reflection, embodied cognition and focus on taboos – it’s about time to come clean.

Order the book here 

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The Love School Project – Exhibition at Gallery 1.1. & Auction

THE LOVE SCHOOL PROJECT
co-creation and design for transformation

VERNISSAGE Thursday · May 4, 2017 · 7pm

EXHIBITION May 5 – 10, 2017

weekend 12pm – 7pm · weekdays 5pm – 9pm
Galerie erstererster · Pappelalle 69 · 10437 Berlin

AUCTION unitedcharity.de/Specials/The-Love-School-Project

PRESENTING Louis Bindernagel · Anna Drewes
Martin Fenske · Georgia von le Fort · Julius Führer
Dario Iannone · Antony Karori · Agnes Kelm
Yannik Rohloff · Anna Ryzhova · Pauline Schlautmann
& Kids from Love School · Kawangware · Nairobi · Kenya

SUPERVISION Prof. Susanne Stauch · Anna Badur
SUPPORT Antony Karori · NGO Nyendo · German Embassy

theloveschoolproject.cre8tives.org

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Un/Certain Futures, Symposium at HBK Braunschweig

The symposium focused on the role of design in social transformation processes. Can futures be designed for the better in a sustainable manner at all? Or will the effects of design interventions always be more or less random reactions to well-intentioned creative acts into otherwise independently evolving autopoietic systems? What is actually »the better«, which we aspire? Should the concept of design be completely rethought?

It was a multi-faceted mind opener. Thanks to the organisers and speakers for two inspiring days.

 

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