Making Home. Zuhause in der Fremde Gestalten

2017–2019, Master’s thesis, Exhibition

Following a six-month enquiry into the informal appropriation strategies of a Malian male community at the Foyer de Travailleurs Migrants Bara in Paris, I established a dialogue with four men with migration experience. Upon their arrival in Germany, they had to grapple with the task of establishing a new home.

As part of a series of participatory workshops, we made an attempt to reconstruct the participants’ former homes from their memories and contrast them with their current living situation in Cologne. Our aim was to identify scope for creative design in their new living spaces and to explore the possibilities and limitations of spatial appropriation within the design process. With the support of architect Heribert Weegen, we visualised the participants’ wishes and ideas over a period of five weeks.
Building on this, we deliberately transcended the architectural constraints of the existing living situations and developed designs for new homes based on the participants’ individual needs and visions. The drawings, models, narrative formats and design concepts resulting from the design process were presented in a co-curated exhibition as part of PASSAGEN 2019 in Cologne. This design-ethnographic inquiry into material practices of remembrance enabled a sensitive approach to the migrant participants’ experiences of loss. At the same time, the exhibition format opened up new public spaces and dispositifs for migration narratives designed by the actors themselves.

This Master’s thesis was supported by the Echtzeitstadt research cluster at TH Köln.

Making Home Paris
Making Home Köln