Between knowledge and action lies the experiment, the venture of starting something new. Along these lines, the “Karlsruhe Transformation Center for Sustainability and Cultural Change” wants to develop and test integrative sustainability solutions in transdisciplinary experiments in cooperation with science and society, and dares to tackle, explore, and shape the change.

The goal of the ITAS project is to have the Karlsruhe Transformation Center for Sustainability and Cultural Change designed, realized, and institutionalized. Its epistemic and creative core will be an institutionalized real-world lab, which conducts research in the framework of a real-world research infrastructure and allows for transformation at the same time. The lab is directly based upon the structures, competences, and experiences of the KIT real-world lab complex “District Future – Urban Lab” (QZ) and “Urban Transition Lab 131” (R131), which has already received numerous awards, and the “Karlsruhe School of Sustainability” (KSN), consolidates them, and adds significant functions and tasks (see below).

As of 2020/2021, Karlsruhe Transformation Center for Sustainability and Cultural Change shall be an independent organizational unit to continue, expand, and further establish the real-world lab work started with District Future in 2012, in order to accompany and initiate transformation processes towards sustainable ways of life and sustainable business activities in the long term. According to its overarching goals of sustainability research and design, the Karlsruhe Transformation Center for Sustainability and Cultural Change is supposed to be financed and run by science and other societal actors in equal parts in future.

Future goals and tasks of the Karlsruhe Transformation Center for Sustainability and Cultural Change

The Karlsruhe Transformation Center for Sustainability and Cultural Change shall synergistically focus on the following tasks and goals:

• Research: Karlsruhe Transformation Center for Sustainability and Cultural Change conducts transformative sustainability research. Apart from this (application- and problem-focused) transdisciplinary research, also basic research on the (conditions for successful) transformation shall be carried out.
• Experimental space: With its real-world lab, the Karlsruhe Transformation Center for Sustainability and Cultural Change creates, opens up, and maintains experimental spaces.
• Innovation and action: Karlsruhe Transformation Center for Sustainability and Cultural Change initiates change, develops and tests social, technological, economic, and other contributions of sustainable development in all areas of life.
• Education: Karlsruhe Transformation Center for Sustainability and Cultural Change provides education for sustainable development at the university, in urban society, schools, and the general public.
• Advice: With its competences and years of experience with real-world labs, Karlsruhe Transformation Center for Sustainability and Cultural Change provides advice to other institutions, municipalities, transdisciplinary projects, etc.
• Communication and networking: It promotes the networking of different stakeholders (e.g., technical and social pioneers of change) in various cooperations (SPPPs).
• Reflection and contemplation: In a restless and more and more tightly scheduled world, Karlsruhe Transformation Center for Sustainability and Cultural Change also offers places of retreat, a hideaway, and thinking spaces for pioneers of change.

Many of these tasks are or have already been accomplished during the development phase of Karlsruhe Transformation Center for Sustainability and Cultural Change, either in the framework of R131 (2015-2017) or during the current operation of QZ, e.g., in the framework of the partner projects “Energy transformation in dialog”, “Klimaschutz gemeinsam wagen”, or “GreenLung”. However, they will be considerably expanded and intensified after 2020.

Vision

Over the next few years, the “Karlsruhe Transformation Center for Sustainable Futures and Cultural Change” will become a regionally, nationally, and internationally effective and visible motor for sustainable development. Karlsruhe Transformation Center for Sustainability and Cultural Change supports, investigates, and shapes the great human task of the “grand transformation” (WBGU 2011, 2016) and questions at the same time some fundamental cultural patterns of our (global) unsustainable ways of life and doing business. Its integrative and synergetic linking of research, practice, and education invites us to overcome existing societal system boundaries, particular interests, and schools of thoughts by looking for real alternatives and starting points for viable cultures of sustainability.

If you are interested in a cooperation in the framework of Karlsruhe Transformation Center for Sustainability and Cultural Change, please do not hesitate to contact us (KAT∂itas.kit.edu).

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Parodi, O.; Albiez, M.; Beecroft, R.; Meyer-Soylu, S.; Quint, A.; Seebacher, A.; Trenks, H.; Waitz, C.
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Die Zukunft europäischer Städte – Herausforderungen an eine nachhaltige Entwicklung. Stadt+Raum 38(2017)2, S. 74-76

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Das Reallabor als Motor für nachhaltige Quartiersentwicklung – Erfahrungen aus dem Karlsruher Experimentierraum. Berichte. Geographie und Landeskunde 91(2017)1, S. 67-80

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Dr. phil. Dipl.-Ing. Oliver Parodi,
Dr. Ing. Andreas Seebacher

KAT∂itas.kit.edu