In this podcast series, Kika Yang spoke with CITYMAKERS Lab participants about their personal motivations and background as city makers and invited them to brainstorm about the potentials of the CITYMAKERS platform.
Kika Yang came to know the CITYMAKERS platform through scholars at Sichuan University where she was invited as a guest-lecturer in December 2018. With her background in architecture, active at the time in the bridge between Germany and China with the planning of a large scale eco-farm project, it was quite a natural process for her to get closer and intensify the cooperation with the CITYMAKERS.
Born in 1981 in Sao Paulo, daughter of a Sichuanese, blended with Austrian, Sicilian and Catalan blood, Kika is a ‘wahlberlinerin’ since 2012, where she achieved the artistic master ‘Space Strategies’ at the Kunsthochschule Berlin Weissensee.
In recent years, Kika has been taking advantage of her almost 20 years experience in the fields of design, scenography, cultural heritage, real estate, branding, events and film production to create her own artistic interpretations, as well as contributing to enhance dialog and learning opportunities. As lecturer for Design at the University of Applied Sciences Berlin, her focus has been to establish partnerships which could bring academy and practice closer together.
What does CITYMAKERS China-Europe mean to you?
Kika Yang: “CITYMAKERS is for me a platform that enables transnational exchange of knowledge, networking and inspiration.”
What does city making mean to you?
“I believe we are going through historical transition in which democracy is being reshaped due to the information revolution. Today, being a citizen means much more than voting. We are beyond transparency, which allows to see. We are beyond expression which allows us to speak. We now may take direct action into shaping the places we like to live in. That is for me citymaking.”
