c.lab – The creative lab for Oberhausen

The Creative Lab for Transformation represents a participatory learning, exchange and production process on the topic of sustainable inner city development that consistently follows on from earlier projects such as Zukunftsstadt Oberhausen, the Supermarket of Ideas, the Summer School and the Masterplan Wirtschaft. In this process, expressed needs and impulses from previous surveys as well as existing concepts are seen as a starting point and further developed with support. In this way, the participants work out solutions together with a variety of actors and in cooperation with the District office l Brückenschlag and the Free University of Oberhausen .

The aim of these solutions is to advance sustainable and participatory inner city development in the sense of the community. At the same time, the creative laboratory strives to unite crafts, creative people and science in the inner city in this way. In order to create long-term workable structures beyond the project phase, Fraunhofer UMSICHT is also planning to establish an association together with the participants.

With the c.lab project, Fraunhofer UMSICHT is working on a more sustainable and demand-oriented Oberhausen: Empty business premises and traffic jams in continuous city traffic - well-known problems of Oberhausen's city center can soon give way to charging stations for bicycles and new recreational spaces, for example.

After a six-month preparatory phase in the digital space, the project has been in the implementation phase since May 2021. Concrete individual measures in the city centre of Oberhausen are being methodically developed, planned in detail and prototypically implemented. Until the end of 2023, the team will continue to develop its ideas and test planning concepts in real operations. In this way, the people of Oberhausen will temporarily experience alternative uses.

Over the last few months, the project team has focused on the four areas of energy solutions, urban production and vacancies, green infrastructure and local mobility, and has achieved initial visions and successes.

In the topic complex of green infrastructure, Fraunhofer UMSICHT is particularly concerned with green structures and climate adaptation. Among other things, small-scale cooling effects can be achieved through green infrastructures, which could contribute to lowering the average temperatures in the inner city. This also includes projects such as Tree Discs 4.0 or the redesign of the station forecourt.

In the case of the energy solutions, the establishment of a lasting learning partnership between the city of Oberhausen, the skilled trades and other building participants has already been agreed. This project is now being brought to life. The focus is on the observation of real building projects as learning objects extended by communication processes.

In the area of digital urban production and vacancies, the c.lab is involved in the renovation of the supermarket of Ideas. The focus is on the construction of an open workshop with traditional and digital production as well as the use of the supermarket as a dialogue space. In addition, the participants will use the vacant key property Paketpost to show what developments are all possible to meet the needs of the city with a vacancy and thus give it a second life.

Finally, the creative laboratory also reforms local mobility. Experiential routes on maps, signs or in orientation systems but also street festivalsare the focus here.

• City of Oberhausen
• Business Development Oberhausen
• Handwerkszentrum Ruhr | Handwerkskammer (Chamber of Crafts)
  
• City stakeholders