| Inhalt: | This seminar examines how a sense of belonging emerges from the interplay between space, social practice and institutional structures. Building on the previous seminar ‘Tell me where home is!’ (Winter Semester 2025/26), it deepens the theoretical and methodological exploration of the theme of belonging, starting from a reflection on the city and its spaces, and extends this to include questions of co-design, governance and placemaking. The seminar explores how the built environment enables people to experience urban spaces as home. It examines how such experiences are shaped not only by the physical characteristics of spaces, but also by the social relationships, decision-making structures and opportunities for participation that arise from them.
The seminar is divided into three modules, which progressively zoom in from an international context to the specific case of Tanzania. Module 1, ‘Home, Belonging, and the City: Locally and Globally’, introduces the seminar’s conceptual framework through key terms such as ‘homing’, ‘belonging’ and ‘urban contact zones’. The focus is on lived urban experiences, which culminate in reflective essays on identified urban contact zones. Module 2, ‘Co-creation and Shared Making in Sub-Saharan Africa’, shifts the focus from reflection to practice. It examines how belonging is actively generated through collaboration, negotiation and shared authorship, with a particular emphasis on participation, power and the exchange of knowledge. This module results in Actor Profile Cards and stakeholder mappings of the construction process. Module 3, Institutions, Governance, and Processes in Tanzania turns its attention to case studies in Tanzania and examines formal and informal institutions, constellations of actors, and the systems through which construction is shaped in practice. Organisations such as TAWAH (Tanzania Women in Architecture for Humanity), APC and Habitat for Humanity act as partners, providing students with information on the case studies via online interviews. This enables students to understand how professional, local and experience-based forms of knowledge shape the built environment. The outcome of this module will be a play, a sketch or another form of interactive communication, which we aim to develop in consultation with an external expert.
A central component of the seminar is a three-hour interactive workshop at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, taking place in the context of the exhibition “Tell me Where Home Is”, which formed the basis of the seminar last semester. Taking the form of a role-play involving various stakeholders, the workshop translates the issues of co-design, governance and placemaking into a public and performative setting. |
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