Open Office Dialogue: Undisciplined knowledge: tools for reclaiming collectivity

KIEZWERKSTATT began with the question of how to create something that will inspire others to organise their own version of it. It envisions a shared set of tools for being together in urban spaces that invite mutual exchange and collective presence beyond institutional limits. KIEZWERKSTATT aims to dismantle hierarchies and recognise that everyday experiences are a valuable source of understanding. Through this, we want to foster open, adaptable ways of gathering in public spaces that generate trust and agency.

For Open Office Dialogues, KIEZWERKSTATT invites you for an afternoon of talking, thinking, making and snacking together. Drawing from both our professional background and our embodied experience of participatory practices, we will create an open and transparent conversation around three key themes: multidisciplinarity, multilinguality, and multisensoriality. We want to go beyond academic and/or institutional frameworks and bend and stretch these concepts in a way that is more reflective of the ambiguities inherent to participatory practices. How do we multiply ways of knowing and reclaiming space within urban contexts? Can we imagine a way of reclaiming space that truly removes barriers? What if first we have to rethink what barriers are or who placed them there in the first place? If we cannot undo power relations can we at least make them knowable?

Workshop leaders:

Vittoria Caradonna is an independent researcher and consultant based in Berlin. Her practice bridges academic research, public dialogue, and collaborative pedagogy, aiming to unsettle dominant narratives about how the past is remembered and used in the present.

Marta Manzuoli is a spatial designer working at the intersection of architecture, exhibition-making, and local identities. Her practice bridges built space, cultural production, and local identities, shaped by both institutional projects and grassroots collaborations.