Convivial Ground, a book by Constructlab

Stories from collaborative spatial practices A book by Constructlab

Looking at Togetherness through the lens of conviviality, exploring daily life within and around different projects, Convivial Ground follows up the narrative experience and explores modes of learning and working within Constructlab’s practices. The book proposes to open up cross-disciplinary debates on the necessary conditions for the existence of sustainable impactful collaborative projects and practices. Published with the renowned architecture publisher Jovis.

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Funding period

12/16/22 - 3/22/23

Realisation

Spring 2023

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Minimum amount (Start level): 3,000 €

Your participation will help covering the printing and editorial costs, ensuring for the quality of the edition.

City

Berlin

What is this project all about?

Piece by piece Convivial Ground invites the reader to discover the work of the transdisciplinary European design-build network Constructlab. Taking Ivan Illich’s understanding of conviviality as a departure point, the essays, conversations, stories, and images in the book reflect on the specificities of collaborative practices as situated experiments, and on their possible roles in the creation of convivial societies. Exploring contemporary conditions of togetherness, learning, and working, the book is not a "how-to" guide, but an invitation to write new convivial narratives cooperatively.

What is the project goal and who is the project for?

One book : many ways and voices to tell many stories at once

There are many possible narratives to approach Constructlab projects. The network always tries hard to generate inclusive projects that speak to all, from the youngest kids to the oldest ones, from any social, educational or cultural background. The book is no exception. Therefore, Constructlab thought of bringing their stories in different forms and formats. Within the pages of the book, you will find theoretical essays, interviews, conversations but also short narrative stories, drawings and images organized thematically or typologically.
Along 480 pages, you will read
3 essays
39 narrative stories
3 convivial conversations (with Thierry Paquot, Tiphaine Abenia + Hae-Won Shin, and Mathilde Sauzet)
More than 100 pages of drawings and images from various projects

With contributions from

Tiphaine Abenia, Rebecca Acosta, Sara Belrhaiti, Laetitia Chamekh, Sofia Costa Pinto, Bert de Backer, Johanna Dehio, Mascha Fehse, Noel Fettingsmith, Mathilde Gintz, Julie Guiches, Patrick Hubmann, Jan Korbes, Alex Lambert, Pascal Lazarus, Benoit Lorent, Linus Lutz, David Moritz, Thierry Paquot, Joanne Pouzenc, Carla Rangel, Alexander Römer, Mathilde Sauzet, Hae Won Shin, Merril Sinéus, Angie Volk, Malte von Braun and Peter Zuiderwijk.

Why would you support this project?

The network has put a lot of time and energy into gathering the content of this book – the effort it takes to create the projects beforehand not even counted. But unfortunately time and energy do not pay for print and paper. To guarantee the launch of the book in March 2023, we need your participation now.

You will receive your own copy!

How will we use the money if the project is successfully funded?

With your help, we will be able to cover the printing and editorial costs, ensuring a high quality of the edition.

You would like to support the project and the network ?

If you want to support our projects and the network, feel free to add a little something to the amount you want to pay for the book. You can also get in touch with the local entities of the network if you want to support us locally : so far, there is an association in Belgium, France, Germany, Portugal and Switzerland.

Who are the people behind the project?

About Constructlab
The transdisciplinary design-build network Constructlab takes a dynamic approach to uniting architectural concepts and construction with an emphasis on collaboration. Breaking with traditional divisions of labor, the organization engages a team of multi-talented designer-builders—as well as sociologists, urban planners, graphic designers, curators, educators, and web developers—who carry the creative process from the drafting table into the field, making it possible for designs to respond to the possibilities and constraints posed by materials, site, environment, and utilization.
Active since the beginning of the 2010s, the network has developed and built many projects internationally, from mobile activating devices to more permanent structures, public space activation or museum scenography. Members of the Constructlab’s networks share a number of core values. Their projects can be seen as experimental ground where they prototype situations to reflect through action and tangible results towards ecological and sustainable futures, possible collaborative economy, transmission and other peer-learning strategies as well as engaging long term with territories and local communities.

Constructlab

Joanne Pouzenc

Peter Zuiderwijk

Lucas Devolder

hello constructlab

Alexander Römer

What are the sustainable development goals of this project?

Primary sustainable development goal

Cities & communities

Why does this project contribute to this goal?

The Constructlab network supports a more sustainable, inclusive and equal development of cities with our city-making-laboratories under self-construction. It is about producing a support structure for public space, in which urban topics can be addressed in different manners, experienced, debated and negotiated. Oriented versus the collective needs.

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