SpaceKraft – Interventionen in (Zwischen-) Räumen

In March 2020, the world went into an unprecedented lockdown. Due to social distancing restrictions and the temporary closure of schools and public spaces, children and young people experienced for the first time massive cuts in their freedom of movement and public social life. The pandemic has highlighted the importance of public spaces and non-commercial outdoor activities, and the urgency for unusual solutions for creating spaces for encounter and participation and the ways we stay in touch with one another, now and in the future. At the Hemingway School, students of the 7th grade worked in a year-long elective course on designing such spaces. For the project, selected every day places were visited, analysed and connected with places that have (not yet) played a central role in their everyday lives: the school, the streets, the museum.

Model, at Markt der Möglichkeiten [Market of Ideas], 2020.

What characterizes a space that protects, invites or excludes? Where is it located? What feelings does one associate with it? How can we occupy new spaces with our stories and even (co-)design them in the future?

Based on experimental methods from art, design and architecture, the project was based on “learning-by-doing”-principles and focussed on collaborative working models, sustainability and spatial renewal, to further develop ideas and proposals. Over the course of a year, forty five degrees together with the students developed, designed and built alternative spatial modules that were used for actions and encounters. One of them was a mobile and modular working bench. The second intervention, an outdoor learning space, is currently being designed and build in the school garden.