Das Baumhaus (The Tree House) is a project to build a public space in Berlin dedicated to bringing people together to engage with each other in meaningful ways by collaborating to develop sustainable solutions that make the world a better place both locally and globally. More info: www.baumhausberlin.de.
We entered the European Social Innovation Competition 2013, and here is our application:
Briefly describe your idea
Das Baumhaus is a new kind of urban public space in the form of an indoor tree house where people can meet to engage with each other in creative collaborations towards developing a more sustainable world. The tree house theme symbolizes the process of bringing neighbors together to build a place to meet, play, imagine and create.
Everyone is invited to join in âmaking the world a better placeâ, to help grow sustainable ideas and networks of support, exchange and collaboration. The goal is to provide a social and professional networking hub, that supports acting together for a better world while making it fun and inclusive.
The space will be built as a functional work of art to be used as a café and project space. Events such as skill exchanges, workshops and lectures bring people from the arts, civil society, public and private sector together to create local sustainable solutions.
The first Baumhaus will be located in Berlin-Wedding, a developing mixed use multicultural neighborhood. The initiators Scott Bolden (44, designer, engineer, event producer) and Karen Wohlert (27, activist, political science) are joined by a growing team of over forty collaborators (neighbors, local crafts people, internationally established artists, creative professionals)
Why is your idea innovative?
Weâre shifting borders how people use public space, making the first expectation upon entering the space to âmeet new people and collaborate for a better worldâ. Weâre offering a new approach to sustainable innovation by making it fun & trendy. Our idea combines societyâs need for sustainable solutions through transdisciplinary, cross-cultural innovations with individualsâ needs for meaningful social connection.
Weâre linking online platforms for social networking back to real life spaces. One might think of das Baumhaus as a hybrid that combines services like âXingâ or âLinked-Inâ with âfacebookâ but also has the advantage of having a physical space to meet in and a highly motivational common cause to rally around.
Weâre evolving the concept of co-working, do-it yourself/together. Instead of just offering flexible workspaces for a rather small target group of creatives and freelance workers working on different objectives, we are building community around the common purpose of âmaking the world a better placeâ.
This has the effect of widening our potential target markets of customers, clients and collaborative partners thusly exposing processes like âcreative & design thinkingâ to a much broader audience while transcending traditional cultural, socio-economic borders as well as those between private and professional life.
How will your idea have an impact? How will you measure your impact?
Our target group includes anyone who wants to make the world or their world a better place. This target group can include people from various cultures, having various professional skills, those gainfully employed or looking for work. This target market is broad by design because we belive social innovation is driven by the develpment of new and old perspectives coming together in new ways.
Through the process of developing greater social cohesion (by developing solutions to specific local problems) and fulfilling human needs (like developing greater trust through regular interaction, cooperation through creative problem solving, pride and respect through participation and accomplishing specific goals) we will create the conditions and scenarios conducive to developing and maintaining specific projects, employment opportunities and economic innovations.
Generally, weâll enhance peopleâs social capital by providing a platform for building social networks. Weâll activate people by providing an inspriring environment, full of art, culture, ideas and events that serve as catalysts for creating a buzz of activity. Weâre supporting a local economy by providing a platform for local social networks and for exchanging products, skills and sevices. Weâre expanding the market for sustainable product and services by making it more visible and trendy. Creative collaborations in the space produce sustainable solutions for our own local market as well as for private clients and companies. Weâre supporting self-employment by providing a space for knowledge exchange (peers and workshops) and by generating sustainable ideas that people might want to put into practice themselves.
Weâll assess the value of our services in different ways: personal interviews, weâll count the number of started projects, sold products that were developped by people in the space, number of products or services exchanged over our online plattform. Also, weâll encourage people to report about their work situation on their online-profile on our website and weâll held quarterly public feedback sessions from people engaged in Baumhaus-activities
At what scale will your idea operate initially and how do you think it can be implemented in another EU member state in the future?
Initially, our idea operates locally in our own neighborhood. Berlin seems to be a perfect location for our pilot project: a growing creative economy, quite entrepreneurial citizens aware of sustainability issues.
We envision a network of urban physical spaces, build with local people in a franchise-like process. We can provide the flexible multi-layered concept and make sure it adapts to local situations, connecting social innovation hubs in all european cities, inspiring and learning from each other.
We think our idea also has the potential to spread, because our concept addresses current social challenges and needs that are becoming more pressing in other european cities as well. And our concept builds on values that are strong in all european cultures: individual creativity, social and ecologic sustainability. Also, the basic structure, the concept of cafĂ©s, labs, project spaces is well known. Whereas our pilot project needs careful curating and step by step culture building, once the idea and culture is manifested in a showcase space, people will have a clear expectation what happens in a âtree houseâ, and the culture we want to support can spread and be adapted more easily.
As people from other cities are already writing to us: tree houses are also needed in other cities.
How do you think your idea could be sustained over the next five years?
Our first and most important strategy is to build an unique and beautiful physical space, together with local and international artists and designers. A space that will be iconic, a âpoint on the mapâ in the city. Secondly, running the space needs to be economically sustainable. In the first year, weâll have three pillars of income: selling drinks and food, space renting, selling sustainable art and design products made by our collaborators.
Our idea is based on multilayered catalyzing of a dynamic culture. We need to carefully build the culture and community around the space and involve right and diverse people from all target groups at the right time. First, weâll involve professional people by building the space, then involving local groups and existing networks to participate in events. Finally, we can add a fourth pillar of income and work opportunity by offering services as a design consultancy for sustainable solutions.
Another aspect of sustaining the dynamic is to broaden our european network and feed the dynamic with trans-local exchange. If tree houses become hubs in a growing network of places, people and projects, crowd-sourcing new ideas all the time and help growing the local economy, there wonât be a problem of continuing moving people towards work.
What are the most important things you need to have in place to make your idea happen? What would you do with the cash prize?
Weâve already been working on this project for almost 2 years. Weâve developed the concept, found a space, filed the building permission, tested resonance to the idea in public, had a successful crowd-funding campaign and started building a supportive networks of collaborators and cooperative partners, who will help building the space.
Basically, what we need to make it happen is money to build the space. Itâs a 140m2 raw space and getting it set up for legal public use is expensive, even with lots of volunteer work and using recycled materials. Itâs not just building walls, electrical installations, floors and plumbing, there are architect fees, engineering surveys, a fire safety report, ventilation and so onâŠ
Finding more supporters and growing a network with other european public spaces for exchange of knowledge and methods would be great. We are also interested in finding partners who can help in evaluation and assessment processes.
We would like to use the prize money for developing our online platform. Having a professional and multifunctional online tool for connecting physical and online platforms, especially for collaborations on projects, would be a great facilitator. We invite other european physical spaces to use our system as well so that we can enable transnational exchange and collaboration. The rest of the money we would like to spend on technical working equipment for the physical space, such as beamer, computer, drawing boards, to facilitate collaborations in the space.