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NetHood has designed, facilitated, and implemented a variety of participatory processes on topics of science, technology, self-organization and communication showcasing a high degree of diversity in terms of areas of common action, research disciplines, actors, cultural contexts, and collaboration frameworks.

Our projects overview and the pages on technology, community, housing, economy, and food offer two perspectives of presenting our ongoing activities.

In this page we structure our work in terms of key elements of the methods and processes co-developed with our project partners that form NetHood’s portfolio and ongoing transdisciplinary research.

All NetHood researchers are engaged in multiple organizations, research fields, and civil society initiatives. Based on thorough scientific knowledge and hands-on experience, we bring together research and action with a reflecting-in-action attitude, in which doing and thinking are complementary while trying out and probing the experiments in projects. That means to be aware of, and reflect upon one's implicit knowledge base or knowing-in-action. “Practitioners themselves often reveal a capacity for reflection on their intuitive knowing in the midst of action and sometimes use this capacity to cope with the unique, uncertain, and conflicted situations of practice" (Schön 1983, pp.viii-ix). Most importantly, in reflection-in-action, researchers and practitioners have the possibility to choose between different paradigms of practice. Schön stressed the limitations of the technical-rationality model, and understands the process of design, rather than as rational problem solving, "as a conversation with the materials of situation" (1983 p.103). These conversations, back-and-forth talking with a particular situation and unique tasks, take into account both the initial assumptions and future responses.

At NetHood the scientific processes are co-designed with the actors engaged including researchers, practitioners, activists, technologists, academics and artists, and the magnitude of the assembled teams depends on the tasks at hand. We design long-term transdisciplinary processes, supported by individual collaborative projects and local pilots that feed into the main thread of knowledge production.

Example: In the MAZI project, the transdisciplinary process was conceived as a series of iterative loops of work in local pilots - cross-fertilization events - self-reflection exercises - interpretation of inputs - work in plenary meetings and deliverables - pilots’ evaluation - work within pilot teams. The object of design, the MAZI toolkit --a collection of user-friendly guidelines, software and stories of practice-- was produced in a back-and-forth process between generic, weakly structured forms, and strong versions in specific, locally defined pilots and toolkit deployments. It was co-produced within a highly diverse consortium, to empower groups and individuals to build and control their own local community wireless networks.

Practice, doing things together, is key in encountering differences, from informal exchanges and information sharing to hands-on workshops, while co-designing processes and spaces to accommodate collective action. In all these activities, the NetHood association includes and values diverse backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives of individuals. Similarities create the foundation for a stronger sense of connection, yet finding common ground is complemented by respecting unique qualities and different vantage points, as diversity promotes mutual learning and brings the dynamism necessary for processes to evolve.

Examples: Encounters in the hybrid city, bringing together digital and urban activists like the C-base and the Prinzessinnengarten teams in Berlin, and more improvised encounters like the L200's "cafe lento" series in 2023.

Transdisciplinary research leads to various forms of knowledge, which are communicated by multiple means, depending on the target group, objectives, scenarios, tasks at hand etc. NetHood’s means of communication are also hybrid including online platforms such as specific websites and social media, showcasing graphics, visuals (photos and videos) and written publications, and also face-to-face means in the form of knowledge exchange meetings, site visits, city tours, workshops, interactive lectures and studios, and long-term projects. In person communication of co-produced knowledge employs a blend of performative practices, which are inspired from participatory practice in urban design and planning such as Tony Gibson’s Planning for Real, from interactive techniques and peer-to-peer learning like in Paulo Freire’s pedagogy, but also from other diverse sources (e.g., MethodKit, impersonation techniques etc), and have been developed over the years throughout the NetHood projects. All of these practices enable dynamic co-creation of knowledge, which stimulates self-reflection and innovation, and facilitates action and problem solving.

Examples: Sarantaporo workshop and participatory design methodology; SINCERE project's TalkingBuildings Platform and Press kit.

NetHood's research toward understanding the hybridity of space has always valued the crucial importance of context and place, not only by working through (hybrid) networks, but also through field research that concretely transforms network nodes into accessible places. Even more, because place matters, our small contribution so far to urban environments enhanced by digital technology is a celebration of physical locations together with local people and community groups engaged in co-designing their neighborhoods in the future city.

Examples: PARticipatory LAbor (PARLA) methodology, and various knowledge exchange projects like Compare and Crochet.

The accelerated development of digital technology has given rise to a new spatial condition, which manifests itself in multiple ways with effects on all aspects of life, including increasingly our private milieus. Enhanced physical environments (places as we know them, just with another functional layer added) are only a superficial representation of this intricate phenomenon. NetHood has been active in revealing its complexity and turning digital space more tangible, through action research, knowledge exchange and community engagement, and in empowering people to cooperate toward creating their own forms of digital technology, anchored in their localities and controlled by community groups.

Examples: The MAZI zones have been deployed in various locations, included the L200 space where, the series 7at7.digital, news from the digital world, was hosted and among others included an interview with L200's local server Lennon. L200 was conceived and brought to reality as a hybrid common infrastructure.

The shared space in which we live is at the heart of our concerns, and its hybrid condition comprises place-making and designing digital platforms. In the co-design process, physical and digital platforms are treated like boundary objects, which have the necessary interpretive flexibility facilitating different ‘social worlds’ to collaborate without consensus (Star and Bowker 1999). Furthermore, as their materiality is derived from action, their understanding expands from material objects to processes. In the NetHood cooperation processes, community engagement plays a crucial role, by integrating local knowledge with networking and capacity-building. The co-production concentrates on shaping shared vocabularies, structuring research around mutual exchanges and comparative frameworks, bringing flexible organizations to reality, promoting collective learning and generating seeds of empowerment.

Examples: the Talking Buildings blog and the Building Stories blob aggregator.

From the poster: The impersonation of buildings and other inanimate objects is not a new idea. NetHood conceived the TalkingBuildings method as a community engagement tool, inspired by Bruno Latour, Wim Wenders and Louis Kahn, among others. In the SINCERE project, TalkingBuildings provides the transdisciplinary framework within wider participatory processes for the sustainable renovation of cultural heritage buildings. Key NetHood collaborators in the methodology’s design and implementation in local processes have been Synergy Rhodes, ECOWEEK, and IG Seebahnhöfe retten.