places
commons · education · museum · ReCentering Periphery · rio de janeiro · social inclusion · social museology · urban commons · urban education
Museu da Maré – Rio de Janeiro
Maré (or Complexo da Maré), in the northern periphery of Rio de Janeiro, is a complex of several favelas with 130.000 inhabitants stacked on 10 sq.km. The Museu da Maré was created by popular initiative to reclaim and de-stigmatise the identity of the neighbourhood. Tesserae researchers had the chance to visit the place and get in contact with the promoters thanks to the CoCreation project.
HAUS DER STATISTIK
Forgotten for almost a decade, the complex of buildings that once constituted the offices for the administration of statistics under the old socialist regime came to the center of the public discourse as a symbol of an across-the-board struggle for the right to the city of Berlin. Civic society actors and public stakeholders joined their efforts to put the unconditional selling of publicly-owned buildings to a halt, stressing the need to replace the monetary principle with the pursuing of the societal common good. The professionalization of bottom-up forms of activism claiming space for culture and diversity transformed the Haus der Statistik initiative into a large-scale project. This currently aims at regenerating the buildings to benefit local neighborhoods, refugees and cultural producers alike through the implementation of participatory practices of urban development.
HALLE (SAALE) – AM SÜDPARK
In 2012-1015 Laura Colini participated at IRS Leibnitz Institut in a research on Halle-Neustadt directed by Matthias Berndt and Daniel Först. This former East-German city has experienced two waves of privatization, leading to a complete change of ownership structures, marked by the rise of financial investors. Cuts have put increasing pressure on welfare recipients to live in […]
PRINZESSINNENGARTEN – BERLIN
Starting from an urban gardening project, the experience of Prinzessinnengarten extended to a wide range of innovative practices, political stances and networking activities fostering a DIY integrated approach. Since 2020, the gardens occupy two distinct areas, both organized on principles of self-sufficiency, food-independence and social inclusivity: the original site located in Moritzplatz (Berlin-Kreuztberg) and the recent acquisition of San Jacobi cemetery (Berlin-Neukölln). The Prinzessinnengarten project promotes gardening as a practice of community building and social emancipation from urban neo-liberal dynamics, while also offering its visitors and members a wide range of cultural and educational activities aimed at sharing different forms of knowledge and skills and at raising consciousness on current ecological issues and social challenges.
