About us
Institute
We are an international and integrative team with a variety of backgrounds and a common passion for creative sustainability. id22 brings together architects, planners, sociologists, artists, community developers and gardeners, educators and others. With members, partners and volunteers from many countries, we study and support pioneering local Berlin initiatives, recognizing there are crises emerging in the world around us. Our Institute emphasizes communication and networking, cooperation and conviviality.
The Institute
id22 is a non-profit, civil-society-based organisation with about 20 members working with social-ecology and creative sustainability, connecting theory and practice in Berlin, emphasizing self-organisation.Main topics of the Institute are transformative and regenerative housing and urban development as a foundation for cultures of sustainable urban development.
History
The Institute was founded in Berlin’s UfaFabrik, a model ecological and cultural urban village, on February 14, 2003. Inspiration came from a large event in 2000, called id22: The Festival for Culture, Ecology and Community. A bottom-up, multidisciplinary approach to sustainability has been the main approach from the very start.In 2008 the Institute moved to a new Building Community in Prenzlauer Berg and then in 2012 began the move to the Spreefed Cooperative and Communit housing project in Berlin-Mitte where it is now based.
Expertise
Our Institute emphasizes communication and networking, cooperation and conviviality, with a focus on self-organisation and local initiatives. In our interdisciplinary team we combine different approaches to sustainability, working with architecture, urban planning, geography, arts and social sciences.Team
Board
Dr Michael LaFond
Community Developer, Project Manager and Urban Activist. Founder and Director of id22: Institute for Creative Sustainability. Current work studies and publicizes relationships among self-organized housing, common good urban development processes and sustainability. Projects include the Berlin Community Land Trust (Stadtbodenstiftung), Kollektiveslernen, books CoHousing Cultures and CoHousing Inclusive, the annual housing fair EXPERIMENTDAYS, the online platform CoHousing-Berlin, creative sustainability tours, etc. Personally active for decades with CoHousing. Since 2011 involved in the development of the Spreefeld Housing Cooperative. At home in the Spreefeld’s Spree WG 1 shared-living group.
Initial degree and work experience in architecture. Interdisciplinary Dissertation in Urban Design and Planning in Seattle and Berlin. Since 2000 teaching contracts with a range of universities including: FU and TU Berlin, Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee, CIEE Future Cities, BTK and UW CHID Berlin. A variety of university, research and teaching projects deal with participatory, civil society-initiated, common good re-developments of urban land and buildings, informal planning, innovative uses of environmental technologies and democratizations of urban planning processes.
Partners include Land Berlin, the European Commission and a large number of foundations.
A focus is on urban, international Community-Led Housing: self-organized, community-oriented, inclusive and regenerative forms of housing. Another special interest is the exploration and development of convivial technologies. In this sense id22 has been developed with its diversity of communications’ strategies: Objectives include being informative and enjoyable, provocative and constructive, communicative, creative and most importantly human.
Initial degree and work experience in architecture. Interdisciplinary Dissertation in Urban Design and Planning in Seattle and Berlin. Since 2000 teaching contracts with a range of universities including: FU and TU Berlin, Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee, CIEE Future Cities, BTK and UW CHID Berlin. A variety of university, research and teaching projects deal with participatory, civil society-initiated, common good re-developments of urban land and buildings, informal planning, innovative uses of environmental technologies and democratizations of urban planning processes.
Partners include Land Berlin, the European Commission and a large number of foundations.
A focus is on urban, international Community-Led Housing: self-organized, community-oriented, inclusive and regenerative forms of housing. Another special interest is the exploration and development of convivial technologies. In this sense id22 has been developed with its diversity of communications’ strategies: Objectives include being informative and enjoyable, provocative and constructive, communicative, creative and most importantly human.
Board
Giulia Carones
After studying Philosophy and Politics at the University of Stirling, UK, I completed my Master of Science in Cultural Anthropology: Sustainable Citizenship at Utrecht University, in the Netherlands, with a thesis on city perception through the lenses of political activism. During my studies, I have acquired and refined a drive for transformational research with an impact on cities and how city dwellers perceive them, and am now pursuing a Research Training Master Programme at Berlin's Humboldt University. At present, I am based in Berlin, collaborating with id22 since my arrival in the city in Autumn 2018. Being elected to the board in February 2020 has strengthened my enthusiasm for the work we do at id22, and the motivation to contribute to its development.
Our home
Since 2014 we have been working in our self-organized Project Space, where we are engaged with our local community, which includes the Spreeacker Initiative and Spreefeld Cooperative.
Project space
The id22 Project Space is inclusive as it integrates CoWorking with project development as well as the creating and exhibiting of art. Office work complements discussions, performances and workshops. Of course the space is an example of Do-It-Together architecture, emphasizing process and participation.
Spreefeld
The Spreefeld Building and Housing Cooperative is one of Berlin’s best examples of self-organized CoHousing, providing apartments for about 130 people and working spaces for about 100. The ground level and extensive landscape bordering the Spree offer diverse places and services for the general public, including community gardens and cultural spaces, daycare and wood workshop. The buildings represent an ecological, passive standard, the site is car-free, and the opportunities for participation are many.
Spreeacker
Spreeacker was initiated by the Spreefeld Cooperative in 2011 before the construction began, to actively engage a variety of cultural, educational and gardening initiatives - incl. id22 and Spreegarten -
in the development of the site. The non-profit Spreeacker association was founded in 2014 to be able to continue to support local community gardening as well as to bring together the cooperative and neighborhood in the development of the planned Spree shore path.
Our engagement
Alongside our projects and activities, we continue developing our partnerships and collaborations locally and internationally. Our long-standing work with CoHousing | Berlin entails raising awareness and spreading knowledge and resources for people interested in alternative, community-led housing arrangements. Together, we provide a free-access platform featuring model projects, multi-media resources and inspiring people from the universe of CoHousing. Internationally, we are partnering up with like-minded organisations and initiatives such as Urbamonde and Co-Lab Research TU Delft to strengthen a shared understanding and commitment of what alternative housing solutions can bring to our cities.