Photos by Christoph Gruber © 2024
The development of the Living Lab in Terrassenhaussiedlung (THS) in Graz, Austria, has made a wonderful start through an engaging series of workshops held from September to November. These workshops have gathered valuable insights and ideas, advancing the estate's decarbonization efforts. Focused on strategy, organization, and stakeholder involvement, the workshops ensured collaborative and structured input, organized by the University of Graz and hosted at the estate’s Community Center with a core team of residents.
The first workshop addressed five key themes and 14 questions, exploring visions for the project, stakeholder engagement, communication strategies, challenges, and potential solutions, including ideas for decarbonization measures. The second workshop focused on organizing the decarbonization efforts within the estate. It provided a detailed overview of 13 decarbonization ideas and an initial assessment of their CO2 reduction potential. In the third workshop, the 13 proposed measures were prioritized using sociocratic methods, ensuring a structured and consensual decision-making process that aligned the group on the project’s next steps. The latest workshop further refined the organizational framework, discussing establishing working groups for the decarbonization process and securing decisions through sociocratic voting methods.
These workshops are an integral part of the ongoing process of creating an innovative and sustainable Living Lab. In addition, Klaus Luig, as leader of the Work Package 4 visited Terrassenhaussiedlung for 1,5 days to explore the potential of the Living Lab in Austria. Further updates will follow as the project continues to evolve.