CITYMAKERS

Meet Miriam Theobald, co-founder of DŌNGXii, who supports CITYMAKERS with the design of virtual touch points. Miriam believes that everyone is an actor who actively or passively shapes the DNA of a space when it becomes a place.

Get to know Yilan Zeng, designer, living in Berlin. Yilan studied Architecture in Beijing and has a special connection to bamboo. She came in touch with the CITYMAKERS platform through the Virtual Walk project 2020, in which she participated with her video “Wonderland Berlin”.

Get to know Sebastian Schlecht, who is supporting our CITYMAKERS platform as the regional representative of CITYMAKERS- Ruhr. He strongly believes in the power of connecting people and natural solutions to make our cities more resilient, just and future-proof to mitigate the strong impact of climate change.

Meet Annette Erpenstein, who is supporting CITYMAKERS with her broad expertise on all things urban. She believes that taking an active role in the co-creation of our cities – and not leaving it to the developers and investors – is the foundation of city making.

Get to know Zhen Zhang, who is a researcher in architecture/building culture and contributes to CITYMAKERS as freelance editor. Her understanding of city making includes a constant focus on specific local conditions whilst keeping in mind bigger contexts.

Meet Jana Brokate, who is supporting our CITYMAKERS platform as digital content manager. She strongly believes in a people-centric and inclusive approach as a foundation for creating liveable cities.

Meet Jan Siefke, who is supporting our CITYMAKERS platform as photographer and host of C*SPACE. City making for him means to question the visible environment – checking the heartbeat of your surrounding, feeling the space – and if possible act on it in your personal style, with your personal skills.

Get to know Silvan Hagenbrock, who has been part of our CITYMAKERS core team since 2016 and contributes his creative energy as filmmaker and editor on urban issues. For him, CITYMAKERS is a (virtual) sphere where the supposedly “other” becomes a little more familiar.

It is official! Out of 43 applications, we have chosen 24 contributions to be part of our CITYMAKERS Virtual Walks Projects 2020. From big cities such as Beijing, Berlin, Luxembourg, Shanghai and Vienna to villages like Hallenberg in the Hochsauerland and the Sichuanese countryside – we got it all covered. Learn about our walkers and their topics – and stay tuned for more!

CITYMAKERS-Fellow Dr. Annette Erpenstein interviewed four citymakers with ties to Germany’s Ruhr region to explore how corona changed our cities and what we can learn from this experience.

What do our fellow citymakers with strong ties to Germany’s Ruhr region observe in the face of the corona pandemic? What potential lies in this crisis in terms of creating liveable cities? Listen to the personal observations and thoughts of members of our Ruhr-community.

During our first virtual CITYMAKERS walk, Popo Fan 范坡坡 showed us what it is like to see Berlin through the eyes of a queer Chinese filmmaker. Its online premiere was followed by a panel discussion between Popo Fan, Carmen Herold, Mo Sun and Silvan Hagenbrock. If you are interested in this discussion, which touched many transcultural topics such as the comparison between queer life in Berlin and Beijing, you can now watch it here.

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While in China, after two months of lockdown, normal life is coming back to the streets, in Europe, the people are only at the beginning of the most difficult phase of this crisis. We asked the 2020 CITYMAKERS accelerator teams from both continents to share their very own experiences about this strenuous time.

How can you re-create your feeling of a liveable city, if you cannot walk the streets anymore? In the situation of lock down in Wuhan, CITYMAKERS-peers developed the “Memory Walk Map-Toolkit”. Join it! Test it! Submit YOUR PERSONAL WUHAN WALK!

CONSTELLETIONS hatte sich mit seinem STADTMACHER-Programm am Wettbewerber “Berlin MittendrIN” als Partner beteiligt und die Kreativwerktstadt CALIGARI CAMP CHALLENGE ausgerichtet. Über 30 engagierte Macherinnen und Macher sind zusammen gekommen und haben Visionen für den Kiez entwickelt!

Get to know Anusha Venkatachalam Iyer, who participated in the CITYMAKERS Virtual Walk Project with her documentary film ‘Walking the Chinese Countryside’, drawing a parallel between urban and rural spaces in China. Anusha believes that enabling a  healthy lifestyle in harmony with nature is one of the most important missions in city making.

Begleiten Sie uns virtuell auf unserer STADTMACHER- Kiezerkundung, in der wir angetrieben von der Frage “Was heißt eigentlich Stadt machen vor unserer eigenen Haustür” den Kiez rund um unser Büro in der Weißenseer Spitze erkunden. Der Virtual Walk wurde von Kika Yang und Fred Plasmann produziert und lädt dazu ein inspirierende Stadtmacher in unserem Kiez kennenzulernen.

We are thrilled to present the 6 selected 2020 CITYMAKERS-Accelerator-cases and their makers here.

Get to know Gerrit Manke, who is supporting the CITYMAKERS team as a student assistant. Gerrit is studying Urban and Regional planning at the Technical University in Berlin and is fascinated by the Chinese perspective of urban development.