The diversity of contributors and contributions for the hotel was the strongest point of the whole project. Each person participates to the hotel with different abilities. And during the process, because of this diversity, we all had to learn how to deal with each other. Explore and sometimes even break boundaries to really understand each other, and act with our strongest skills according to others skills. Here we'd like to introduce students with a few words about their previous experiences that became useful during the hotel project.

Cynthia Wagner

“ama sua, ama llulla, ama quella” (don‘t steal, don‘t lie, don‘t be lazy) – traditional Inca greeting. That doesn‘t mean I don‘t like being lazy every now and then! The UdN is a very special experience and I have not done anything like it before. I do work in a project which organizes participation workshops but not like at the UdN where you have to have a physical result at the end and produce and strengthen social structures around your project. My job (since I have only participated during the first few weeks, not too much): For the "Opening event“ I was in the infrastructure group (I organized electricity, helped in other groups as well such as making the guestbook, cooking, building a bar). During the second step (analyzing important parts of 5star hotels), I was in the reception group - made illustrations of different hotel lobbies and came up with a "characterization“ of what a concierge is and what he needs to be.

Felix Müller

I‘m really fascinated in what you guys are doing with the UdN. It looks great. Next semester I will again participate. This semester didn‘t work out for me... "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas." – George Bernard Shaw.
I got in contact with a huge variety of people (exchange students, artists as well as staff of Kampnagel-Arts-Centre) which was a great source of inspiration. My contribution to the UdN and Hotel Wilhelmsburg was more a research and logistics thing. We spent a lot of time at Kampnagel where we had our sleeping installation as a testing ground for the Hotel Wilhelmsburg. I was organising the pallets for constrution and took care of the technical site of the project as well as mediation with the techical assistants. During our research workshop in july I mainly focused on graphics as well as the law topics.

Melih Kös

I was a member of BEST (Board of European Students of Technology). In Istanbul our Uni was responsible for the biggest meeting and the poject of the year. We created an organisation about "build your dream stage“ and organised to whole events, parties, accomodation and lectures on building to teach students about stages from different historical contexts. It was a three months process and we did not have any money. But at the end we found sponsors even for a boat trip to go swimming... It is a really famous and big organisation now. The aim of the organisation is to teach people some how to design their project better, how to repair some school in the country side and in villages, create better conditions for kids without any money, asking for people to participate and help how they could take the participnts to a boat trip. Also I was part of "Architecture For All". AFA is a non-profit and independent architecture organization based in Istanbul devoted to offering architectural solutions to social problems which are faced today in Turkey and beyond and promoting participatory design process in architecture education. "Creemos en los sueños“ A Cuban saying, means "we believe in dreams“.

Julia Zajaczkowska

Ok so i don't have any specific quote that i like or that would describe myself, but i like doing things d.i.y. and analog with a focus on details... And i think you can always get the most out of almost nothing creating a "luxurious" atmosphere whatsoever
: ) Besides UD I am and have been working in the cultural environment in hamburg. I am working for RockCity Hamburg e.V - Zentrum für Popularmusik (its an association working for professional musicians in the poular musicsector. There I am responsible for PR and organisation of concerts, festivals and congresses including also the design and decoration of those events. Besides this job I am working in a restaurant in Schanzenviertel (cooking and serving food), I am organising parties and concerts with some friends and I do webdesign and "management“ for a painting artist. Thats about it. I have a bachelors degree in cultural science with a special focus on arts and cultural organisation. I'm a hipster! Hahahahahaha like you. I hope this is enough information.

Michelle Renz

I did my bachelor in geography. So I‘m more in this text stuff than in designing something. My work was more with the head than with my hands (e.g. working on the organisation for the Verein, write something about the resturant, thinking about the interior design of the capsuels...) but beside I was also involed in the organization of the wednesday dinners which was more work like doing something than thinking about it.

Martin Muth

"Wer die Enge seiner Heimat begreifen will, der reise. Wer die Enge seiner Zeit ermessen will, studiere Geschichte.“ – Kurt Tucholsky. I studied Socioeconomics in my Bachelor. In the course of these studies we trained administration skills and where taught about funding systems. In my former job team work and intercultural sensibility was required. These issues are elementary in the hotel project. During my studies I asked myself often what to do with all the theory. Is it practicable? In the course of the hotel project an answer was given. It was a great benefit that the project took place in interdisciplinary groups so we had a very effective knowledge and experience transfer. The multiple connections of all the disciplines surprised me.

Paul Rauppach

Before Urban Design I finished a bachelor in Landscape Architecture and an internship in Zürich at a Landscape Architecture Company. During my studies I did several projects where the focus was more designing a process, than doing a classical static architecture. For example a project that was concerned with urban development for young people in Hannover or a temporary use of an office building in Rotterdam. During my exchange semester in Scotland I made a project about the urban development in Inverness. The task was how to open the city towards the shoreline of the north sea and how to include/ develop an old landfill and an industrial estate located in front of the sea. For my bachelor thesis I did a project that was about a development concept for Salzgitter industrial landscsape. The context was more rural, but the goal was similar to the Hotel Wilhelmsburg, that the actors (Inhabitants, companies, ...) are able to build their environment to have better living condition respectively conditions regarding the location of the companies. In the Hotel Wilhelmsburg Project I fist focused on the sanitary issues. And of course like everyone else I organized the Wednesday evenings (organizing cool/musician and so on...) Later I was in the organization group. Therefore I worked on the Job profiles and the club rules for our upcoming association.

Julian Bauer

"Style is the answer to everything.“ – Charles Bukowski. What i did in the project (IKP): contact people, communicate with people, architecture stuff, layout work, material research, cooking with the cooks...

Sarah Osswald

The UDN pictures look great, guess you have a great time. I just "worked“ on three days on this project - so I definitely don't belong to the people contributing to the project. And I wouldn't find a quote which fits to my role anyway.

Christopher Phiphak

“Don't bend; don‘t water it down; don‘t try to make it logical; don‘t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.” - Franz Kafka. Prior to this experience, I participated in international workshops with american students as well as Master Urban Regeneratıon Erasmus Mundus students. Besides that I worked in architecture offices which were also with international architects (meaning architects from all Europe). My main accurate experience and probably my strenght is to be able to work and adapt myself in a group. Moreover i‘m a Chicagoan by birth but a raised Parisian within a Laotian environment. Which could explain why i can work within intercultural group. The most similar experience I had was a project with tutor Carin Smuts, a south african architect who bases her work on gathering community and low budget material.

Tina Steiger

I have a bachelor degree in political science from the University of Florida and a Masters degree in Urban Studies. I don’t have a fancy philosophical quote to give, but one of my favorite sayings and one that I identify with is “if you see someone without a smile, give them one of yours.” My fleeting, but impacting involvement in a selforganised culture house, called the Candy Factory, in Copenhagen Denmark, gave me insight into shaping bottom up cultural events such as concerts, workshops, and lectures, in low budget settings. This gave me experience in collaborating with neighbors and working to realize autonomous projects in collective fashion. Also my background as a german, growing up in Florida, but having lived in various European countries over the past years has taught me to be flexible, senstitve and capable of collaborating with people from various sociocultural backgrounds.

Tim Koblun

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.“ – Hunter S. Thompson
"The rug really tied the room toget- her.“ – The Dude
"The Beatles were basically a vocal band.“ – Keith Richards
"Maximum reality!“ – MC Maxim Reality a.k.a. Keith Palmer
Tim, who spent a vocational training as a wholesale and export trade merchant, has studied urban planning in Hamburg. Since then he asks how to plan cities and who does it. Projects during his studies covered topics such as urban development under private economic influence, the creative class as a cause of urban development, intermediary use as a planning strategy for urban development. During a semester abroad in Vienna he has done research on informal market worlds based on the research project Other Markets by Peter Mörtenböck and Helge Mooshammer. Now he is about to finish his master‘s degree in Urban Design.

Valeria Micara

Graduated in Philosophy in Bologna, studying Archtecture in Università degli Studi di Romatre in Rome and currently attending Architecture, Stadt Planung and Urban Design courses in HCU as an Erasmus student. What I found interesting in the “Hotel (?) Wilhelmsburg” Project was the constant interrelation between the many goals of the project. Concept, organisation, architecture and construction grow together and every step in one of those fields transform the other ones. To describe this experience I would use a quote of Edgar Morin: "Thinking that the simple and the complex are linked. It took a fabulous complexity of biological and social interactions to achieve a simple smile."

Dominique Peck

During my youth in the Austrian countryside I played drums in punk and hardcore bands. The cool thing there was, that we had to create a scene in order to be able to play. Somebody had a venue, somebody had a sound system, somebody could organize drinks, somebody eventually figured out how to do a website, record an album and so on. Over the years the scene grew and we managed to play shows in Vienna and also toured through parts of central eastern europe, staying mostly in squatted houses. "There's no romance in hesitation." – Scott Campbell.

Viktoria Scheifers

I think the most similar experience to the hotel project for me was the one we did at Kampnagel last summer. We were designing and realizing an installation were 70 people would actually live for days, on a low budget, 1:1. What I really liked there, besides the design process, was in general working with real people on a real project for, well, real people. This is mainly why I decided to be part of the hotel project. About me... I am good in paying attention to the small things that make something special in a way, and in crafting and stuff like that... I like to do graphic design and generally illustrate things to make them more understandable, style wins. My experience in the hotel project is described by Robert Sutton's quote quite good: "The truth is, creativity isn't about wild talent as much as it's about productivity. To find a few ideas that work, you need to try a lot that don't. It's a pure numbers game."