The project

KIEZWERKSTATT is a mobile framework for collective meaning-making and collaborative learning in urban space. It approaches knowledge not as a finished product to be exhibited, but as an unfolding process – where people meet, inhabit and reappropriate space, and negotiate meaning.

Developed at the intersection of critical research and spatial practice, the project brings together reflections on memory, narratives, and power with the design of environments that shape how people gather and interact. Based in Wedding, a district marked by visible transformation, gentrification and the coexistence of different communities, KIEZWERKSTATT engages with urban spaces as socially accessible yet contested ground. It asks what role participatory work plays within these dynamics: how institutions shape neighborhoods, how culture can contribute to exclusion, and how it might instead be practiced as a shared resource.

KIEZWERKSTATT envisions a shared set of tools for being together and being present that invite mutual exchange beyond institutional limits. The street, the square, and the in-between spaces of the city are treated as legitimate sites of knowledge production. Knowledge and its cultural expressions are understood as collectively shaped and continuously negotiated – open to appropriation, reinterpretation, and contestation.

Rather than simply being replicated, participatory formats are recomposed within a coherent conceptual structure that does not shy away from addressing power imbalances and hierarchies. Zine-making, walking tours, scavenger hunts, and temporary installations are combined and repurposed for each intervention. Conversations are facilitated by the simple act of creation: as hands move and touch, thoughts are free to form, drift, and explore. The incomplete and fragmented but valuable traces of this activity are collected and made accessible, forming an evolving archive of the present.

The project operates through three structural principles:

Mobility and Adaptability
KIEZWERKSTATT is not tied to a fixed venue. Its set-up, appearance, and themes respond to context while maintaining a consistent conceptual framework.

Scalability
Interventions adjust in size and intensity according to situation and relational contexts. What remains constant is the structure: a shared topic, guiding questions, material engagement, and an archival outcome.

Expandability
Urban space has no predetermined maximum capacity. The format remains open and replicable, inviting others to appropriate and reinterpret it according to their own questions and urgencies.

Through a range of low-barrier formats, the project aims to make space for multiple ways of knowing and sensing the world. Based on the idea that everyday experiences and exchanges are a valuable source for collaborative learning, KIEZWERKSTATT challenges the hierarchies between finished and unfinished, experts and (counter)publics, process and output. Through an evolving program, we aim to create open, adaptable ways to gather in urban spaces that foster trust, agency, and collectivity.