Charging the Commons is a 2-year project that investigates the design of digital platforms for resource communities. The project explores how a Situated-design approach can be employed to articulate the (social) values of resource communities. In addition, the project examines how these values can be translated into a design for the management of an urban commons, using digital ledger technologies (DLT’s).
Paper | ‘Becommoning’: a design-framework for the initiation of new commons
Last October, Suzanna Tomor presented the paper “‘Becommoning’: a design-framework for the initiation of new commons” at the IASDR – International Association of Societies of Design Research. Read the full paper here.
Canvas | (Be)Commoning: A Framework for the Initiation of New Commons
This is a first iteration of the (Be)Commoning canvas – a framework that aims to provide insights for emergent resource communities and offer a useful tool for professional mediators / facilitators who can support commoners with an overarching guidance of becommoning.
Roundtable | Charging the Commons: From (Be)Commoning to Commoning
Watch the first episode of the Charging the Commons Roundtable Series, which centered around the process of becoming a commons
Workshop | Charging the Commons workshop at Placemaking Week Europe 2023
The Charging the Commons research team organized a workshop at the Placemaking Week Europe 2023, under the title “Becommoning” – a design framework for the initiation of new commons”. Click here to find out more.
Workshop | Domestic Bliss
Charging the Commons team organised a workshop to explore with the Community Land Trust (Bijlmer, Amsterdam) members what and how they want to share, within the context of an urban commons community
Becommoning – of hoe een commons een commons wordt
De afgelopen maanden heeft onderzoeker Suzanna Tomor literatuuronderzoek verricht naar de totstandkoming van collectieve woningbouwprojecten. Welke aspecten komen in dat proces aan bod, en wat zijn mogelijke succes- en faalfactoren?
Charging the Commons Research Cases
The Charging the Commons project investigates the design of the rules and (digital) tools for ‘resource communities’, also known as commons’. In this research, three cases have been identified so far: the H-buurt, De Warren and Commonwoods.
Circulate Movies
With the intention of documenting and disseminating the themes, research processes, and main outputs from the Circulate project, we created a series of short movies. Click here to watch.
Circulate’s Livecast Series: Rights to the blockchain city
with Pakhuis de Zwijger and Het Nieuwe Instituut, the Circulate project organised a series of three livecasts to discuss implications of blockchain and digital platforms for the management and governance of the urban commons.
Design Canvas Digital Platforms for Resource Communities
The canvas employs a Value Sensitive Design (VSD) framework that can help explore the values at stake, the affordances of technologies, and the motivations and interests of stakeholders. This canvas is one of the tools we designed to help designers and companies discover the values within a particular community, understand which values should be made explicit and how they can be aligned with the affordances of the technologies.
Horison, a dashboard and app for the promotion of C02 neutral living.
In May 2020 Students of the minor User Experience Design were involved in a Circulate student project. They were asked to engage a fictional community in balancing energy usage and production by visualising the (private and collective) usage and availability of energy.
Ener-geyser
The Ener-geyser (or Schoonschip Geyser) is a data-driven (floating) fountain that visualises peak times: times when there is a high demand for energy on the communal energy smart-grid of an Amsterdam-based resource community called Schoonschip. By visualising energy levels in real-time, the Geyser helps the community make decisions about when to turn on appliances, in order to achieve their agreed sustainability goals.
Neighbours: Using serious games as a tool for community building & research
‘Neighbours’ is a game created to help community members and facilitators to explore the values within a community, with the ultimate goal of providing valuable insights for community regulations and the development of platforms to promote the production, sharing and management of their common resources.
Peak Shaving Time – shedding light on the social ramifications of smart technologies.
As part of the first workpackage of circulate we conducted several probes exploring the underlying economic and social values within resource communities, and how these values can be given a role in the development of digital platforms to aid these communities. Peak Shaving time is one such probe.
Workshop The City as a License: Design, Rights and Civics in a Blockchain Society
The goal of this workshop is to work towards a special issue / edited volume on the theme of The City as a License: Design, Rights and Civics in a Blockchain Society. We seek written and visual contributions that explore the opportunities and challenges as well as actual experiments and designs of Digital Ledeger Technologies in civic contexts, from a perspective of urban governance, social justice and the ‘right to the city’.
The City as a License. Implications of Blockchain and Distributed Ledgers for Urban Governance
After the smart city, will the blockchain city now follow? New technologies such as distributed ledgers may herald a new phase for the way digital media and big data are deployed to manage, use and shape public spaces and urban infrastructures. The City as a License is a perspective, which illuminates that development from the starting point of the city as a modern, open community with democratic and inclusive public spaces.
The City as a Licence (NL)
Volgt na de smart city nu de blockchain-stad? Nieuwe technologieën als distributed ledgers (decentraal beheerde databases) luiden mogelijk een nieuwe fase in voor de manier waarop digitale media en big data worden ingezet om publieke ruimtes en stedelijke infrastructuren te beheren, gebruiken en vorm te geven. The City as a License is een perspectief, dat die ontwikkeling belicht vanuit het vertrekpunt van de stad als een moderne, open gemeenschap met democratische en inclusieve publieke ruimtes.
Solar Trade, an energy dashboard and energy sharing marketplace promoting sustainable energy usage.
In May 2020 Students of the minor User Experience Design were involved in a Circulate student project. They were asked to engage a fictional community in balancing energy usage and production by visualising the (private and collective) usage and availability of energy.
The Blockchain and the Commons: Dilemmas in the Design of Local Platforms
In this paper for CHI20 we introduce a framework of three mechanisms and six ‘design dilemmas’ that can aid in balancing conflicting values in the design of such local platforms for commons-based resource management.
An interactive light system and dashboard for a Sustainably Powered Kitchen
In 2020, Circulate collaborated with a group of students from the HvA Master Digital Design on a 4-week design project, which had Enki Energy as its main client. For this assignment, the students were asked to create a data visualisation tool that facilitated the use and maintenance of the Enki Energy’s biodigester used in a communal kitchen at a housing complex in Amersfoort.
ANNA a speculative film by Anna Brynskov
ALEXANDRA is a short film made in order to spark conversation with people about how to design digital systems in a good and humane way. The film aims to open up a critical and nuanced conversation on blockchain algorithms for sustainable, local communities with the people of Amsterdam.