Welcome!

Designing Economic Cultures is a research project that sets out to investigate the relationship between socio-economic precarity and the production of socially and politically engaged design projects.

The fundamental question the project poses is:
how can designers, who through their work want to question and challenge the prevalent economic system, gain a satisfying degree of social and economic security without having to submit themselves to the commercial pressures of the market?  Read more ›

Construction site for non-affirmative practice

Constructive Dismantling

My Castle Is Your Castle

Workers’ collectives in Berlin

The designers of Image-Shift produced a set of playing cards that introduces a series of collectives working in Berlin. The game is called “Das Richtige im Falschen” (The right inside the wrong).

Here is a list of all the collectives presented:

Printing
Hinkelsteindruck (print and layout)
Oktoberdruck (printing)

Cafés, pubs, etc.
:// about blank (“Tanzwirtschaft”)
Café Cralle (bar and living room)
Clash (pub)
Meuterei (pub)
Morgenrot (food and drinks)
Straßenbahn (pub)
Syndakat (pub)
Tante Horst (“Likörchen-Kollektiv”)

Foodshops
Biokraftkeller (organic grocery)
Die Backstube (wholegrain bakery)
Gekko (wholesale)
Kraut und Rüben (organic grocery)
Ökotopia (organic tea and coffee wholesale)
Schnittstelle (fair trade grocery)

Other shops
Malerladen Frauenkollektiv (materials for renovating and painting)
Oh21 (book shop)
Real Deal (anarchy-vinyl shop)
Schwarze Risse (book shop)

Other stuff
Babylonia (language school with migration consultancy)
Drittwerk (metal workshop)
Fahrwerk (couriers)
Fsk-Kino & Peripher Filmverleih (cinema)
Jungle World (weekly magazine)
kanalB / Content e.V. (online TV channel)
Kreuzberger Taxi-Genossenschaft (cabs)
Radspannerei (bicycle shop)
Regenbogenfabrik (kids, culture and neighbourhood centre)
Praxiskollektiv Reiche 121 (doctors’ surgery)
Prosys (consultancy for women)