In cities, people are getting older and more lonely. In Hamburg, for example, more than half of all households are single households, and nearly one third of those living alone are in retirement age. In many villages restaurants are closed, so that meeting places are missing.
At the Social Design Award of SPIEGEL ONLINE and SPIEGEL Wissen, which was announced in cooperation with BAUHAUS for the fifth time this year, ideas are sought that improve neighborly coexistence.
Almost 200 submissions came from Germany and Europe, as well as South Africa, Brazil or Mexico. An expert jury has selected the best ten projects that we present here. Because now you are in demand: Choose from the shortlist your favorite for the audience prize endowed with 2500 Euro.
You can vote until the 28th of October, the vote can be found at the end of this text.
The winners of the Audience Award and the Jury Prize will be announced on SPIEGEL ONLINE on November 13th.
1. The Tactical Urbanists
Social Design Award 2018
Tactical urbanism already exists in the USA and in Brazil. The idea behind this is that citizens' involvement in planning processes is always asymmetrical: the authorities have the time and expertise, the citizens have no time and no expertise - but they know their quarters. And they know how it would have to be changed. And then they do it easy, sometimes with, sometimes without official approval.
Also in Lüneburg a group of Tactical Urbanists has come together. After a neighborhood meeting in a parking lot on the roadside plans for further action emerged. The plan is "what the Danish urban planner Jan Gehl calls 'life between houses': we open the space between individual buildings as a meeting place and turn the streets of Lüneburg into living rooms." In 2019, the group, which consists of students, professionals and a retiree, wants to get started with one action per month: from the urban swing to the big scrabbling.
2. KulturMarktCafé
Social Design Award 2018
The Mühlenkiez, in the northeast of Prenzlauer Berg, is one of the poorer districts of Berlin. Hundreds of refugees also live here in various accommodations. There are hardly any opportunities to create encounters between the Berliners who are rooted here and the new neighbors. And so volunteer helpers founded the KulturMarktHalle in an empty department store.
The result was the KulturMarktCafé - a mobile café that falls into the "Tiny House" category. This neighborhood meeting was opened in 2018. It runs on a donation basis, so those who have more money pay more. The café is run by a young Syrian, who has thus found an income and a job in Germany. The KulturMarktCafé is installed on a trailer so that it can be moved to another location for events.
3. Love is the strongest waffle
Social Design Award 2018
Imagine, you could divide your heart into five pieces, give away and make people happy. It does not work? But, there goes: In 2015, an Aachen student began baking and giving away waffles. First to his household, then at major events. First as a happy action, then as a political action. "Love is the strongest waffle" he calls his idea, which for him combines "art, food and politics in a humorous way".
The donated waffles fill the homeless, children are happy, and they put the sharing idea into action. The art of action should make strangers talk to each other, and it should make the waffle consumers to think: How much heart do they claim for themselves, how much heart do they share with others? How much do you want to return as a donation to the Waffelbäcker?
4. Mama is free! Including children's hotel
Social Design Award 2018
It all began with a neighborhood party, when an employee of the Heidelberg association, habito, learned how difficult it is to have only one evening off in a conversation between a single parent and the mother of an autistic child. For a babysitter can afford the least in the district Rohrbach.
The conversation was the starting signal for the "Kinderhotel" in Mehrgenerationenhaus Heidelberg. The children arrive at 5 pm, have dinner, make bread on the campfire, spend the night in the house or in a Mongolian yurt in the garden and stay until breakfast. Also children with disabilities are welcome here. The Kinderhotel nights are always under their own motto: "scary night figures" or "stormy times on the high seas" for example. In the future, the association plans to specifically invite children of refugees to "give the children the opportunity to have a carefree time".
5. Mikropol
Social Design Award 2018
Rothenburgsort is one of the poorest parts of Hamburg, built on post-war brick buildings. 77.6 percent of the inhabitants have a migration background. A secondary school is missing, but still not built. When the district center was demolished, suddenly there was no place for resident initiatives, from the social and Mieterberatung to the bicycle workshop.
That is why six architects, designers and artists from the Hamburg School of Fine Arts proposed to convert a no-longer-used toilet house on a traffic island in Rothenburgsort into the new district center "Mikropol". The authority for culture and media already approved 20,000 euros, and also the district council welcomed idea. "We are committed to an open neighborhood based on acquaintance rather than foreclosure and isolation," said the initiators of Mikropol. The initiative is currently negotiating with the city about the contract of use.
6. PlugIn
Social Design Award 2018
The modular wooden house "PlugIn", which stands in front of a Berlin refugee shelter, looks like a greenhouse. It was designed by students of the TU Berlin and built together with refugees. "The idea of the small pavilion is not only to create a venue for the inhabitants of the refugee shelter, but also a meeting place with the adjacent neighborhood," writes the student team. "In addition to organized events such as book bazaar and plant festival, the pavilion can be used at any time by the residents of the accommodation for smaller private parties and celebrations."
The construction is simple and inexpensive. It consists of material that can easily be bought in the hardware store: plywood boards, screws, bolts, nuts, steel cables and perforated strips. The outer skin is greenhouse film. "PlugIn" can be extended as desired, so that the pavilion can also be recreated easily and thus can be used eg for neighborhood projects on fallow land.
7. Power Age
Social Design Award 2018
Passing on knowledge to the neighbors, to the next generation - this is the idea of the Swiss "powerAge" experience bank. The wealth of experience for people between the ages of 55 and 80 is the capital stored in this digital but locally operating community bank. Here you can help those who need help or support.
The bank, which develops a team around a Swiss management consultant, works as an app. First, the experience-based abilities of the providers are recorded, then the appropriate current queries and tasks from the neighborhood are searched for. And in the third step, the conditions for the exchange of experience are determined. Universities in Switzerland, Austria, Italy and Hungary have cooperated with the EU to promote this APP. In 2019, the "powerAge" experience bank, which is financed by a foundation, is to be tested in Basel.
8. RISK.
Social Design Award 2018
The Art Nouveau building in Bremerhaven is a serious refurbishment - but for a group of former students the right place to realize their project: a house where people live, artists work and neighbors meet at cultural events. A "haven of creativity" call the operators of RISK. her project.
For two years, they plotted redevelopment and financing plans until they were able to buy the 1300 square meter building in the structurally weak city. The makers of RISK. say: "It takes more places of art and creativity that are not curated by the public sector, and it is precisely this autonomy that is needed to create something new in the neighborhood and neighborhood, to give impetus and to create space for exchange."
9. Use Dorp, use home
Social Design Award 2018
Ellewick-Crosewick is a village in North Rhine-Westphalia with 1500 inhabitants. There were doctors, shops, inns, but gradually this infrastructure disappeared. The villagers did not want to take the desertification of their place any longer. They decided to found the cooperative "Use Dorp, use Heimat" and run the village pub. A few months later, an arsonist destroyed the project. But the cooperatives were lucky: the owner of the burnt down house built the "Wirtshaus". And the cooperative got public funding for their next idea: a beer garden in the village center.
The concept worked: at 265 appointments, the restaurant and beer garden were booked for weddings and funerals, for meetings and birthdays. But "Use Dorp, use Heimat" has more ideas. A charging station for e-bikes is to be built and the "pergola" will be another meeting place for neighbors.
10. Interim use as an urban commons
Social Design Award 2018
An "Angustum" was the parking lot in the Mannheim Neckarstadt, a barren place between the "old train station" and a discount store. The densely populated district is considered a problem area. The non-profit organization "Pow" designed a new usage concept called "Age", which provides a mix of sports, culture and neighborly encounters.
With the support of the city and a project development company, three different parking spaces were created in the parking lot: a skateboarding and cycling course, a kiosk made of recycled lumber with sports equipment rental, a basketball court and a soccer field, the possibility of urban gardening, a bicycle workshop, a ping-pong table. Since 2018 there is also a permanent street worker on site. The concept is designed to be developed by new ideas and actors. In 2019, for example, there will also be gastronomic offers for "Alter": Food is delivered by local restaurants via a bicycle courier. The "Age" project is designed for three to five years.
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