Thematic participation in the area of local social economy in the IBA 2020 pre-planning team

Focus: conceptional contributions to an IBA 2020

The Internationale Bauausstellung (“international building exhibition” / IBA) is a German planning and architectural instrument. These architectural and urban planning exhibitions, initially concentrating solely on buildings, have increasingly become an arena for interdisciplinary experimentation, where current issues can be debated in an exemplary fashion. Since 2008, Berlin’s Senate Office for Urban Development has been campaigning for a third Internationale Bauausstellung in Berlin, IBA 2020. It has been working intensively on a concept for the proposed IBA 2020 since autumn 2010, supported by an interdisciplinary pre-planning team of seven recognized experts in the field (Martin Heller, Sonja Beeck, Thilo Lang, Pamela Dorsch, Markus Bader, Vanessa Miriam Carlow, Fritz Reusswig). The IBA Studio has also been running since January 2011, providing a forum where the team of experts can present the intermediate results of its work for public discussion.

The IfL was primarily integrated in the pre-IBA 2020 process under the heading “future-oriented entrepreneurial city.” In previous building exhibitions, questions related to economic development tended to play a subordinate role. In the case of Berlin, the IBA is called upon to find innovative solutions to the city’s urgent social problems. These solutions should facilitate socially compatible economic development and recognize that local residents are the greatest potential of a locally anchored economy. In this way the proposed IBA 2020 in Berlin could add a citizen-friendly and more strongly problem-centred perspective to existing strategies for encouraging the city’s economic development.

As well as participating in the development of a concept for IBA 2020, the IfL team organised events around innovative funding and organisational models for bottom-up urban development in the framework of the IBA Studio, as well as strategies for an intelligent general framework and alternative housing forms. These were all documented and intended to generate project fields for IBA 2020 in conjunction with research on the place of economic aspects in other IBAs and a project catalogue with best-practice examples (to be developed).

Further tasks of the IfL team included the development of possible organisational and funding structures for the proposed IBA 2020 and the organisation of an “IBA intervention”. The latter was intended as publicity to demonstrate the potential effects of an IBA at a central location of the projected IBA.

Results/Publications

Documentation: "Stadtentwicklung anders denken"
Download (pdf): Konzept/Flyer/Newsletter IBA Berlin 2020
Working Paper "Soziale Ökonomie in Deutschland"