Habibi Dome is a collective process and platform at the same time. It is a collaborative and interdisciplinary practice which is considered as an instrument for constructive criticism as well as a tool kit in social and political fields. It is a collective Initiative deeply involved in the society that turns art and/or design into an emancipatory, democratic and therefore also political process.
Habibi Dome was first developed 2016/17 at the European Border in Greece in the intercultural workshop Habibi. Works to support people arriving after fleeing their home countries. After spending years on their flight and months of waiting in an unsure situation in Greece people decided that there is a need for a self-determined room, a community room.
Main principles in this process were to communicate and work together at eye-level as well as using and developing existing, open accessible structures, for example, the nowadays online freely available Geodesic Dome of Richard Buckminster Fuller. The aim is that participants generate access to social participation and education self-determined and through methods of art and design.
Then, 2018, in Munich, Habibi Dome then functioned as a platform for exchange across supposed borders, as an image for an open-minded Munich.ย It was realized at different places in Munich with the MaximiliansForum Muฬnchen (exhibition space of the Cultural Department Munich), the werkraum of the Hans Sauer Foundation, residents of a so-called accommodation for refuges pupils of a local high school, and the Designer Roubs Style. Habibi Dome popped up at different places in Munich and offers the opportunity to get to know each other and to reflect, how our society wants to live together โ without prejudices and fears.
Habibi.Works is an open, intercultural workshop, a social design lab and platform for education, empowerment and encounters for refugees and Greek locals near Ioannina, Northern Greece. In 11 different working areas people create, learn and work together at eye level. Habibi.Works supports them to create solutions themselves. Itโs driven by the main statement that people who fled their countries are not considered as helpless victims, but as talented and experienced men, women and children who can be an enrichment for our societies โ if we provide the structures that allow them to integrate. This is what Habibi.Works aims to do. Habibi Dome is initiated by Franziska Wirtensohn and Michael Wittmann, both graduates from Academy of Fine Arts Munich and team members of Habibi.Works. They collaboratively work in different interdisciplinary contexts and consider their practice as a collective process deeply involved in society rather than a finished product. Thus their projects are realized in day-to-day life, in public sphere and focus mainly social, political and technological contexts and issues a social relevance of approaches in art and design.