Urban Design Studio 2023/2024
Tutors: Juliana Canedo, Christian Haid, Anke Hagemann
Chair: Habitat Unit
Students: Mehrsa Marzban, Piotr Oskwarek, Kristina Polosina, MortazaRahimi, Shahin Sedighi, Aida Baratzadeh
Energy production has transcended regional boundaries to become a global concern of paramount importance. The landscape of energy generation in Germany has undergone significant transformations, propelled by legislative initiatives aimed at fostering renewable energy adoption. Five pivotal laws have shaped this transition. Renewable Energy Act: Facilitates the expansion of renewable energy capacity. Offshore Wind Act: Stimulates the development of offshore wind projects. Onshore Wind Act: Mandates the allocation of 2% of Germany‘s land for onshore wind power installations. Federal Nature Conservation Act: Streamlinesspecies protection measures to accommodate wind energy projects. Energy Industry Act: Expedites the national grid expansion to accommodate increased renewable energy integration. The current emphasis lies on renewable energy generation, with renewables accounting for 50% of Germany‘s total energy production, poised to escalate to 80% in the foreseeable future. 
This surge in wind energy infrastructure triggers various dynamics,including escalated land prices, intensified competition among wind farm developers, inquiries into additional energy requirements, equitable distribution of wind resources, and localized opposition. We mostly focus on the relation of power that comes as a sequence of above mentioned federal wind-power politics and the monopolization processes as a reaction to financial attractivenessof this business. We perceive the significant danger in renewable energy companies gaining power, as their expansion is encouraged by government, while the discussion about unrestricted capitalistic growth and the role of energy is being omitted. We see how little influence citizens have on these processes, in contrast to how much influence these processes have on citizens.
Moreover, the role of nature emerges as a pivotal stakeholder often overlooked in the discourse surrounding energy production. In this project, we stress the idea of sustainability as it primarily focuses on the possibility of undisrupted human development (especially economic growth) in realm of climate change. We claim for a shift to a more “eco-democratic” approach, which takes into an account needs of both human and non-human actors.
We perceive energy production as a highly modernist process that monopolizes its right to nature, capital and the process of decision making. Therefore, we state the need of diversifying this process on different levels: from variety of actors that produce energy to differentiated sources of energy that comply with current possibilities of borrowing from nature. Central to our near-future vision of energy production is the establishment of a cooperative that, in partnership with other mediators, as urban designers, human proxies (humans that represent the interests of nature) and local actors, follows the