Project

International digital network Constructlab
How do we make complexity of collaborative design-build processes tangible? How do we portray our diversity and comprehensiveness? And how can digital design reflect analogue connectivity?

Occasion for these reflections was the development of a new digital networking platform. Aim of the platform is to make the networks wealth of experiences accessible and showcase its variety. Since its foundation more than ten years ago, Constructlab has carried out numerous design-build projects, produced publications and lectures, and now gathers members from twelve different countries. Working in transnational teams, their endeavors focus on a return to the intelligence of materials, on designs that can respond to their own potentials and limitations, and on working processes that take account of social and ecological needs.

 

 

Design by Peter Zuiderwijk

 

The content of the new digital networking platform was prepared with the help of a digital symposium On the Network, at which four different workshops took place. They all dealt with Constructlab’s core concerns from different perspectives, concerns which represent the common thread of the new platform: communal learning strategies, climate activating, collaborative financing models, the perks and responsibilities of engaging with territories and communities. Accustomed to thinking and working in projects, the creation of the website was a project in itself for the members of the network and the public. Funded by the Fonds Soziokultur, it brought the main European associations into a close, albeit spatially separated, mode of co-working. The result of this transnational teamwork equally emphasizes the chances of togetherness and collaboration. It is more than the online display of an impressive portfolio, it is a visualization of the size of the network, its vast knowledge and the diversity of its members and associations. Each of them gets its own page, links between actors and projects are mapped, recurring typologies and methods are explained. The website design, developed with the playfully radical Dutch web studio Buurmen and graphic studio Collective Works, is a bold statement, a presentation of the inner workings that does not demystify or disenchant Constructlab’s practice but, on the contrary, makes you want to dive into the multiverse of the network even more.

 

The project is coordinated by the german association Constructlab-Berlin e.V. (Gemeinnützigkeit anerkannt).

Gefördert durch den Fonds Soziokultur aus Mitteln der Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien im Rahmen von NEUSTART KULTUR.

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