In her presentation «Research on humans? On the scale of research groups» at the International Symposium “too big to scale” at the ZHDK Zürich, Julie Harboe described and symbolicly materialized different shapes or portraits of research groups she has been part of. From her experience and inspired by the work on Denkkollektive by Ludwik Fleck, she came up with the assumption that space, time and energy shape the gestalt of research groups.
One of the four research groups Julie analysed and described was the Future Laboratory CreaLab which she characterized as follows: CreaLab has no defined space, it is non-territorial. It can be best described as a series of encounters between researchers and practitioners who face future-related complex problems. CreaLab is kept in Schwung by its own energy, the intrinsic motivation of the people who work in this group.
The portrait of the Future Laboratory CreaLab combining the formulations ’scaled› in the wind tunnel of the Size Matters project: The open space, time as activity cluster-balls, and the ‹Schwung› as interaction between participants.