Ruben Heppner: Between neighborhood meeting place and shared apartment

"Vacant space is becoming increasingly commercialized and privatized. We wanted to counteract this with a future-oriented concept and set impulses - for a colorful and livable neighborhood," reads the website of CU.Office, a minimal waste coworking space in the middle of Berlin's Wedding. When co-founder and initiator Ruben Heppner noticed a vacant dog salon in his apartment building during the Corona period, he didn't hesitate - and launched a community space himself.

With his background in urban and regional management, he brings a lot of expertise to the table on the one hand and gained a lot of experience developing a participation platform at the TU Braunschweig on the other - but how does a participatory coworking concept work in practice and why does he rely on coapp as a communication tool? We asked him.

Ruben, how did your coworking space in Berlin come about in the first place?

At the beginning of 2020, I let my contract at the TU Braunschweig expire because the commute was getting exhausting - and in March the pandemic came and I couldn't do anything anymore. In the house of my Berlin backyard apartment there was a studio that was never used, so I suddenly saw a sign: "For rent". Out of interest, I just called - after all, I live there and wanted to know what was happening with the space. Coincidentally, it was the same property management as my apartment - and because I was looking for a new coworking space anyway, everything happened very quickly: After three days, my co-founder Anika and I had the space. But at that point, of course, we didn't have a clear idea of what it would develop into.

How did the story continue?

With my team, I have from boredom in the lockdown the 100sqm with their own money kernsaniert. There was never a business plan or funding. Curious from today's perspective, but at the time we really assumed that the pandemic would last maybe four weeks. (laughs) At some point, however, I had sleepless nights because, in the worst case, you have to bear the costs personally. And because we didn't need this large area for ourselves alone, we thought about what the needs of others were.

During the lockdown, this has changed for many employees and freelancers. What came out of this reflection?

For us, it became clear that people need a mix between home office and semi-normal office life. Overall, we could see that although they learned to appreciate the home office at Lockdown, they naturally also want social contact and to leave the house sometimes. We hit a nerve with our coworking space in that we are relatively inexpensive. For 60 euros you get a membership, we don't offer anything like Flex or Fix Desks, so it's low-threshold. We see ourselves more as a "home office add on", an extension of your own living space.

You write on your website about "sustainable solutions" in human interaction, what do you mean by that?

Here we are concerned with two approaches: On the one hand, we are guided by the minimal waste principle. This impulse came from my co-founder Anika, as she also deals with the topic professionally. To put it simply, we didn't buy anything new. On the one hand, because we had no money anyway, but also because we as founders drive this lifestyle anyway. It was important to us to get all the furniture second-hand. The only things we bought new because of energy efficiency were the stove and refrigerator. Visually, it looks more like a shared apartment with too many desks than a clean Ikea catalog office. (laughs)

Secondly, we set up as a GbR, detached from the agency. We define ourselves as non-profitable. It works as a business model - we have around 40 members, a few of them with a fixed table - and it also pays for itself, for example we pay off a private loan. But the non-profit approach should remain, the whole thing should later function as a non-profit association, so that it is a self-governing place that people can design and manage themselves.

The association model is rather unusual for a coworking space, what do you expect from it?

It's important to us that the idea endures even after we no longer live there. Our goal is to create more such spaces. That's where it comes into play that I studied urban development: If you create a place on a small scale for 40 people, on a block where maybe 8,000 live, that's a start. We want to show that it's not that difficult to occupy spaces in a sustainable and socially entrepreneurial way. Gambling houses, pubs and betting shops may have their raison d'être in the neighborhoods, but we specifically lack spaces that are there to collaborate, to meet, to discuss ideas. There are not so many meeting rooms for small organizations that don't have money. Our project shows that it can be done differently. It cost a total of about 15,000 euros to renovate the core of the rooms. Thanks to the spirit of the association, everyone is contributing.

You've done a lot of work on participation. Does that work for you? How is it different from other coworking spaces?

I have worked in various coworking spaces myself. Many write the "nice community" on the website, but that doesn't always happen. I've been to maybe two coworking spaces in total that I think have managed to create a real atmosphere. Sometimes that also has to do with the location. In cities like Berlin, you can't necessarily plan when people have to move away or are only in town for a few months anyway. For our community, for example, we have introduced a "friendship rate" for all those who have quit their jobs but remain loyal to the idea.

What does participation mean to you?

In communities that rely on human willingness, people need an incentive. You have to create that incentive and make a continuous effort. We are currently trying to increase the number of our members to such an extent that we can finance at least half a position. This is to take care of community management so that it has a structure.

This is also where coapp comes into play. Why did you decide to use it?

We are currently switching from the Cobot app to coapp. Cobot worked flawlessly, but is purely an administrative software. In terms of participation, it was rather complicated. When people had a great idea, they had to go to the system administrator, which was annoying and time-consuming. What convinced me about coapp was that you can also start things on your own initiative. You can also link more locations, which is great, because we're just opening another office in Braunschweig. From a technical point of view, billing in particular has to run smoothly, the accounting aspect is important. With Stripe, that runs smoothly. But what I like most about coapp is that it can function as a participation platform.

As a developer, I'm also interested in the feature requests that other users make, but I think that you don't have to overload a system too much if the core elements work well.

In essence, an app doesn't have to be able to take on all tasks without exception, but rather better organize human interaction, right?

Yes, absolutely. Of course it makes sense to coordinate, organize and document things digitally, but the ideas always happen interpersonally. At a concert, at an event. That's what coapp is great for - it can bring people together. I can collect requests and contacts on the platform and find people again. That's what I like, that the app really wants to bring people together, who can then support each other.