In context of the exhibition Tischkultur at Galerie Handwerk München, and as seen during Munich Creative Business Week 2025, we noted, opined, that tables exist as "the physical and metaphoric centre of any community and society"; yet regardless of how many can sit at that table, not everyone is always invited, enabled, empowered to sit at that table.
With the project A Seat at The Table! students from Berlin International University explored approaches towards the Designing Spaces of Assembly and Participation of the subtitle, explored processes and structures to enable all to take their place at the table and thereby to enable all to contribute to contemporary discourses.
A project that through cooperations with five different social and cultural partners resulted in five very different responses in five very different contexts: Non-Human Perspectives & Cohabitation, a proposal, and as with all proposals one developed by a collective of students who for reasons of readability, and against our normal position, we will refrain from naming, sorry!!, but otherwise this test text would be a continual list of names...
...Non-Human Perspectives & Cohabitation, a proposal located in/on/over/under Berlin's Tempelhofer Feld, the former Tempelhof Airport that now exists as a public green space, and runway, and which seeks and sought to remind us that the human species is not the only species on the planet, that there are a great many others we need to consider, admonished the need to sharpen our focus on the environments we occupy and thus, in our reading, through introducing non-human species force us all to query if contemporary design processes are inclusive not only in context of non-human species but of the human species as a whole, or if they tend to reinforce dominant groups; Sex Workers in Dialogue, undertaken in cooperation with the Frauentreff Olga, a shelter, drop-in centre, advice centre for not just the sex works of the title but all females outwith conventional definitions of society, and that resulted in a redesigning of the interior of the Frauentreff in context of reflections on, arguments in context of, safety, dignity and visibility, three of those things conventional definitions of society tends to take from those women who make use of the Frauentreff's service; Migration, Diaspora and a Right to Stay which considered how in an increasingly hostile environment those organisations dedicated to supporting refugees and migrants can achieve a meaningful visibility, and that resulted in a mobile, responsive, auction platform, and associated urban furniture, intended to be staged and employed in different Berlin Kieze.
While ouwith Berlin Inclusion in Rural Areas took the example of the Distelhof community in Sargleben, a village half way between Berlin and Hamburg, and an institution that provides space for neurodiverse individuals as the basis for exploring not only how inclusion in rural environments can be enabled, but also, again in our reading, how rural economies can be supported by way of empowering local, rural, communities and thereby shifting the focus in context of participation away from the urban space it tends to concentrate on.
And a focus on Distelhof which very pleasingly highlighted the role that flax can play in empowering and supporting rural economies; and thus a focus on that plant, that cultural good, which, along with hemp, we passionately believe Europe needs to rediscover. Ideally very, very, quickly.
And also, as our highlight of the quintet, Parkour: Shaping Your Own City. A proposal that started, and for us very pleasingly so, with the walking on low walls when traversing any city that is natural to any seven year old, and to us, we've never knowingly not walked along a low wall in an urban, or rural, space, despite being a lot older than seven, but which adults tend not to do, but which we believe all adults should do, should view, approach, judge the world, move through the world, more as children, it can but help, and moved on, pun intended, from there to approach parkour as a means to discover a city, as an alternative way to explore a city, as a means to achieving the necessary change of perspective we should always seek, one could argue parkour as an extreme approach to the Spaziergangswissenschaft, Strollology, of a Lucius Burckhardt.
A parkour the authors very neatly then transformed into a series of interventions in the urban space within/withon/over which all are invited to move that highlights, albeit without the risks and hesitations of parkour, the city as a playground for young and old alike, that reinforces the city as a social space all are free to move through via our own route, all have the right to move through via a route of our own. And the importance of not unnecessarily blocking the routes of others. They have rights to. While also reminding that sometimes two routes unavoidably block each other, necessiting from both parties a diversion, a compromise.
Thus a quintet of responses to the brief that for all their variety united in a coherent, integrated, pun again intended, composition, that tended to an argument that there is no standard, simple answer to questions of participation, no best practice example to participation, no master-plan that can be drawn up and transposed to other locations, other contexts. A state of affairs which, for us, tends to underscore that ensuring participation is possible, ensuring all seats at the table are not only accessible but that everyone knows they are there and are invited, empowered, to take them up, must be a pro-active process, isn't something that can be left to sort itself out. Be that in the wider society of A Seat at The Table! or in a microcosm of that society as represented by a workplace, a shared accommodation, or a club/association.
And thereby reinforces that democracy, which is ultimately what the project was about, isn't an actual thing, but is an ongoing process defined by those who participate, by those sat at the table. And thus a project during Berlin Design Week 2025 that very nearly linked into Munich Creative Business Week 2025's motto How to design a vibrant community.
In addition Berlin International University used the opportunity afforded by Berlin Design Week, BDW, 2025, to present the results of the project Punk & Participation which set Communications Design students the brief to demonstrate "how storytelling can foster conversations and shed light on discussions of relevance for a younger generation", a brief that for all it contained the word "storytelling" to which we a strong allergy, didn't produce any results that caused us to break out in sweats, rashes and debilitating nauseousness, but that did allow for a few nice insights into communicating contemporary realities in a way that didn't and doesn’t make them definitive truths.
And also Constructive Contingencies with its in-depth review of independent architecture in Cuba since 1952, a project that also highlighted the amount of architectural talent Cuba lost following the Revolution of 1959, a fate that not only reminds of the more or less contemporaneous loss to the fledgling DDR of a wealth of architecture and design talent it simply couldn’t afford to lose, but also that on account of the Revolution in Cuba Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's administrative building for Ron Bacardi y Compañía wasn't built in Santiago.. but Berlin. And also reminds that while others left Cuba in the wake of the revolution, a Clara Porset returned to offer her services, only to find that political power games meant her services were rejected out of hand.
Only to discover, if one so will, that there was no seat for her at that post-Revolution table. But imagine if there had been, imagine if a seat at a table wasn't something you had to fight for.......
More information on Berlin International University can be found at www.berlin-international.de
Berlin Design Week 2025 has now ended. Details on what you missed, and on the event in general, can be found at https://berlindesignweek.com
