Blog

Last week, Silke Gebel, Sprecherin für Umwelt, led a delegation from Berlin’s Green Party to visit the Baumhaus to find out what we are doing and see where it makes sense to collaborate.

Our meeting went great and we even managed to get an interview with Silke on film; stay tuned for the edited version…

Check out some sore photos of the last structural work and help out this week.

This week, KW 24, will be another transformative one:

Our mission this week is to shape and attach the organic forms of the walls and floors onto the main structures in the front room. This includes the bar and kitchen area, the men’s toilet and all the structures that collectively form the Atrium. The space will start to show the signs of its aesthetic character!

Two more important things to accomplish this week

1) finish sound insulating the water pipes in the back room – continue building boxes around them to fill with insulation material.
2) clear extra materials out of the back room – the sound proof ceiling will be installed the following week!

SIgn up here to participate anytime from June 13 to June 17: http://doodle.com/poll/3qb9ptgr2i4xq9r2

Check here for future weeks: http://www.baumhausberlin.de/en/building/mitbauen/

Can’t make it by to help, please help us make our crowd-funding successful. Every small donation counts especially if we get lots of them: https://www.startnext.com/baumhausberlin/successful/?transaction_id=87babaa33c8170e9b1b2f6838a8a7497&success=1

June 28, 2016

6.30 pm meet and greet
7:00 pm begin

At our seventh planning meeting we will be elaborating our 3 systems.
– our vermiculture team has raised their baby compost worms over the last weeks to become big strong compost worms that are fully fledged and are even tempting to crawl out of the boxes. The teenagers were given a big bucket of leftover kitchen scraps to feed on on June 13th. Now we are curious to see if our system worked, how we can separate the worms from the soil, what we do with the compost and what we can use the highly nutritious “worm tea” for. Any ideas?
– The hydroponic Lush Jungle group has spent the last weeks measuring light, humidity and temperature to figured out which plants would work well on the wall. Let’s pick them out together!
– During the last meeting, a group made sketches for a new vertical gardening soil system. Together, we want to explore ways to make it come alive.

The Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/488248618051203/

For a full update of the last meeting, check out this page on our website: https://www.baumhausberlin.de/en/eng-vertical-permaculture-garden/

We look forward to seeing you there!

For more info on the Baumhaus, check out:

our FAQs – https://www.baumhausberlin.de/en/baumhausprojekt/faq/
and our 3D fly-through – https://www.baumhausberlin.de/en/building/allgemein/

This year, we from das Baumhaus will participate in the Open Source Circular Economy Days (OSCE Days) on June 12 and we will use the time to plan how we can make the Emergent Berlin festival for sustainable initiatives (September 23-25) an OPEN SOURCE and ZERO WASTE event.

On the one hand, we are aware that festivals create huge amounts of trash and we want to find ways to reduce it. But our challenge is not just about ecological sustainability, our main questions are: How can we make our festival zero waste in a personal, ecological, aesthetic, cultural, economic and social way? (P.E.A.C.E.S.) How can visitors experience and learn zero waste at the festival?

We would be thrilled if you could help us brainstorm at the OSCE days on June 12, 3pm – 7pm at Agora’s new hall (Agora Rollberg (open construction site) / Am Sudhaus 2, Neukölln.

Find out more about our challenge here:
http://community.oscedays.org/t/how-can-we-improve-the-emergent-berlin-festival-e-g-by-making-it-zero-waste/4677

Find out more about the OSCE days here:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1733371270238971/

Emergent Berlin 2015:
http://www.emergentberlin.de/?lang=en

Keynote: www.baumhausberlin.de/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Osce-days-Emergent-festival.pdf

Now that most of the support structures are up we started putting up some surfaces and walls. The place really made a nice transformation just in time for the Mayor of Berlin-Mitte, Dr Christian Hanke & Fr. Patz-Drücke to stop by for a supportive visit.

We also got a visit from Aftab Omer, the President of Meridian University stopped by to discuss the next steps in our ongoing collaboration.

We enjoyed a nice bbq in the park and a small but intense vocal improv workshop in the candle-lit space which provided some new perspectives on it’s own.

Other highlights:

• Decorative painter Murielle Gandre dropped off some new designs for the facade of our aquaponic waterfall vertical garden.

• We got really cool blue and Purple potatos from our CSA delivery group! They taste as good as they look!

Sign up to come by and help to continue transforming the space in June or supprt the volunteers by cooking during the following weeks:

30.05 – 03.06

06.06 – 10.06

13.06 – 17.06

20.06 – 24.06

27.06 – 01.07

Improvisational Groove Orchestra (I.G.O.) – a fun way to experience authentic connection and community through exploring a commonly created sound space. (links to examples below)

We meet every other Thursday to listen, respond, observe and curiously play with the sounds our voices create together. Our objective is to tune into the common feeling we are developing in the present moment.

Most of what we do is with our eyes closed. This allows everyone to be very focussed on only the sound space without any other distractions…

At each session we usually have an equal number of beginners and experienced singers; all levels and voice types are welcome. Scott will explain a few basic and intuitively understandable concepts to make it super easy to dive in and be jamming out within the first 1/2 hour.

It is a learning process in progress, each time balancing ourselves in volume and expression to merge into the group sound space, allowing everyone to hear and be heard, naturally developing our own musical styles.

The last times we explored further into the human sequencer game – a system where one person acts as a conductor, splitting the group into small parts, giving each small group unique impulses that than develop into one composition.

Feel most welcome to come and join us!  (please be on time, there are important things to explain before beginning)

20:00: meet-&-greet and hangout

20:30: start warming up!

• You can find recent and older tracks from previous IGO session in Das Baumhaus here: https://soundcloud.com/scott-bolden

• Here is a video showing another fun method with larger groups: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjzmfpnZhDk

The address is Gerichtstr. 23 in the front house on the ground floor, you can walk in our door from the sidewalk. Please bring healthy snacks to share, we will have some drinks in the fridge on a donation basis, we also have hot water for tea & coffee.

* This is a free event for now, but we please ask you to generously donate whatever you feel the experience is worth.  All your donations go toward helping us pay the rent while we build Das Baumhaus this Spring and Summer.  What is Das Baumhaus?  https://www.baumhausberlin.de/en/baumhausprojekt/

** Please also consider making a donation to our crowd-funding campaign so we can complete the Baumhaus to officially open in September.  If everyone who reads this donates 5€ and spreads the word we can really make this a crowd effort!  https://www.startnext.com/baumhausberlin

*** If you would like to help us finish building and designing Das Baumhaus then go here: https://www.baumhausberlin.de/en/building/mitbauen/

Thanks!

A short extended interview with Christian Hanke, the Mayor of Berlin-Mitte, on why he thinks Das Baumhaus is a project worth supporting… (german language with english subtitles)

Please support us in building a better Berlin and world today!

EN: https://www.startnext.com/en/baumhausberlin

DE: https://www.startnext.com/de/baumhausberlin