Designing from the edges – Lakefront as a space for inner and outer transformation
- Sven Stegemann
- 24. Juli
- 9 Min. Lesezeit
The Lakefront Project in Stockholm is more than a community project. Sven Stegemann found a living experiment in transformation design. This article shares insights from his time spent on site, exploring what emerges when people live, learn, and lead from the edges.
1. Arriving in the Open
Whenever a new place emerges with a new community, something about it pulls me in. Last autumn, when I first heard about the Lakefront Project during the Inner Development Goals Summit in Stockholm, I felt a spark – and, like the class nerd, found myself the first one at the open house. When my friend John-Certus Lack moved in this summer as a resident, I felt that pull and the question once more: What might emerge here?
I’ve been part of such moments before in several projects I co-founded over the last decade. The moment of the blank canvas has always been my favorite in any project – when nothing is defined yet. Now I am back, eight months later, in the south of Stockholm.
And in summer, the Lakefront Project looks and feels quite different. The old nurses’ dormitory is partly lovingly renovated, partly still under construction – and already feels like a giant shared home. Outside, the lake, open land, blue sky. Many people. And, as I quickly notice: many questions.
I talk to Priscilla Zamora Politis from Chile. She spent years living nomadically, moving through countries, projects, and contexts. Now she’s here. At least for a while. “Finally a real community, a bit like a family?” she asks – while also facing bigger questions: What will I do in the future?
The work she once did in the field of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) no longer feels fully aligned. The identity categories she worked with for years now seem to be shifting or dissolving. Instead, she speaks of transcending boundaries – or thinking about them differently altogether. From the perspective of the Global South, yes – but also from a sense of unity, complexity, and layered interdependence in life on this planet. For her, and for many others here, something is unfolding: a learning movement where the old rubs against the new.
The framework here is in place: the site exists, the organization runs on sociocratic principles, and there’s a loosely shared vision, shaped by the background of the Inner Development Goals and inspired by the Nordic tradition of civic learning, like the folkhögskolor.
But when it comes to content? There’s still a lot of openness. If I had to describe the project in one sentence, it would be: an invitation to shape what doesn't yet exist.
2. The Framework – or a Foundation?
Such an amount of openness is rare in this world. It's not a given, especially in a context where resources are usually tight. But here, the gravitational pull of economic realities seems temporarily suspended.
The property is owned by a private company founded by Tomas Björkman, designed to be financially self-sustaining rather than profit-driven, while the community is organized separately through a sociocratic association. Together with others, Tomas launched an experiment here: What might a place look like that’s not only for living or working, but where something within also begins to move?
That’s the core intention: “Inner Shift for Outer Change.” Inner development comes first. Then societal impact.
On the website, it reads almost poetically: a residency for personal and collective evolution. But to what end? Lakefront is framed as a kind of laboratory – a place where inner development fuels outer change. People come here to deepen their capacities, co-create new social practices, and experiment with ways of living that might, over time, ripple into broader systems. That’s why there’s openness for workshops, creative formats, and emergent forms of collaboration.
Just two weeks ago, a musical-experimental residency took place here. In the old Swedish organ house, a collective of sound explorers, musicians, and instrument builders from around the world reimagined what instruments can be – blending hacked pianos, sculpted synthesizers, and percussive tools made from unlikely materials into a truly otherworldly sonic-social experience.
This week will take a different turn. More nerdy and visionary: the theme is Network-Nations, embedded in the ongoing discourse on metamodernism. A circle of invited experts will explore questions like: What do communities look like when they no longer define themselves as geographic nation-states, but as networks? How do identity, belonging, and governance function in such fluid, globally connected systems? From digital infrastructure to lived experiments in collective agency – the event is designed as a space for bold ideas and prototyping new political forms.
Info Box: What is Metamodernism?
Metamodernism is a cultural and philosophical mode of thinking that refuses both the idealistic promises of modernity and the ironic detachment of postmodernity. Instead, it moves deliberately between the two like a dynamic pendulum.
Modernity believed in progress, grand narratives, and clear visions for the future. Postmodernity deconstructed those narratives – skeptically, critically, often with the sense that nothing is so simple. Metamodernism takes both seriously: the longing for meaning and the justified doubt. It functions as an “informed naivety” – we dream, knowing how fragile dreams can be. We act with hope, while carrying the ambiguity within.
Typical of metamodernism is what one might call ironic sincerity – a kind of earnestness with a wink. A willingness to commit to something without becoming overly sentimental, but also without falling into cynicism.
It oscillates between hope and skepticism, unity and diversity, idealism and pragmatism. And it brings a certain structure of feeling. A collective emotional tone in which people are once again ready to seek meaning. Perhaps that’s the appeal of places like Lakefront. They embody this metamodern sensibility: vulnerable, ambitious, consciously incomplete.
What I find striking: Network-Nations is envisioned as a globally networked concept – yet it unfolds here, in this very tangible, physical place. Between communal kitchens and co-working nooks. The digital meets the physical. Network logic meets a sense of place and presence.
Here at Lakefront, words like “community,” “belonging,” and “future viability” gain texture, a tone, and sometimes friction. Maybe that’s the metamodern core of this place: a play between form and freedom. A practice of belonging that isn’t built on fixed categories. Or at least one that questions them deeply. And a collective learning process – sometimes visionary, sometimes fragile – that feels all the more human because of it.
3. The People
I talk to residents as I meet them – over a longer interview, during dinner, or quickly in passing. What's your vision for this place? I keep asking. No one has a ready-made answer. It simply doesn’t exist yet.
“It could become one cell among many – a place where people explore what a new societal order could look like in practice. That includes individual development, unlearning, new learning, and ultimately, inner transformation.” That’s what I hear from Ivo J. Mensch. Ivo researches and practices in a similar field as I do – even drawing on some of the same theoretical backgrounds, from systems theory to Jean Gebser’s cultural-historical theory of the evolution of consciousness.
He picks up on a thought from Tomas Björkman, who links the success of the Nordic countries strongly to the concept of Folkhögskolor, the Swedish folk high schools. These are places where citizens educate themselves voluntarily, with a focus on democratic responsibility and personal development. It reminds me of the coffeehouses that played a key role at the beginning of modernity around 300 to 350 years ago. Back then, curious tinkerers and thinkers gathered to exchange ideas and marvels, long before information was available everywhere.
It’s similar here. Today, information is accessible everywhere, but knowledge, in the sense of embodied understanding, is not. For that, we need contact and lived experience, the kind that places like this can enable. Can enable, to be precise. “I hope this will be a place that radiates into practice, into the world. Hopefully we won’t just theorize and stay in our little bubble. This place has to breathe,” says Ivo.
Marie Söderberg, with whom I sit for a while in the sun-drenched kitchen, sees it similarly. And she adds another dimension. “For me, this is an island of sanity – and we will need those in these times of growing chaos.”
4. Times of Chaos and Tensions in the Making
The openness and hoped-for depth here bring with them the typical tensions of emerging organizations. In fact, I find it oddly reassuring that the gravity of ordinary human life isn’t entirely suspended by idealism.
On the one hand, there is the utopian projection: a place for new forms of living together, for commons, for purpose-driven work beyond old systems. And at the same time, there’s everyday reality: construction work, budget issues, governance meetings, interpersonal friction.
I speak with Karin Finnson, who understands herself as an elder and used to support groups and guests on Ekskäret Island. After a classical career in the pharmaceutical industry, she spent the final stage of her professional life as a Gestalt therapist. “I can see myself being there for others on their journey. Sitting here, listening, working together. But then suddenly, the garbage starts to smell for reasons I can’t quite define, and I find myself trying to solve this very practical problem – ne that just can’t wait,” she tells me with a smile.
She also wants the project to stay connected to the real world. Open to people from all walks of life, not just those who can afford it. And for people to commit in the long term. Not just a few days in a temporary community, as is so often the case in today’s jet-set world, but relationships that last for years.
Another tension: the desire for collective movement. Many who come here bring big questions: How do we want to live? What does the world need? But this collective longing meets deeply individual processes. Everyone brings their own story, their own background and turning points – and with that, their own developmental needs, which often have little to do with the collective at first.
And then: uncertainty. Anyone moving in or joining the project has to surrender to the flow. It sounds vibrant – but it’s also exhausting. Especially for those coming from highly structured environments, it takes courage to embrace this kind of not-knowing. Priscilla sees great value in exactly that, even when it’s hard: “I want to stay in this state of not-knowing for as long as possible. Or better: as long as necessary. A part of me wants to fix it: What is this? What am I doing here? What is my role? But jumping to the safety of a definition risks repeating the past. Newness needs time to emerge. And you can't force it to go faster.”
And despite all this: the question of access. Who can afford to live, experiment, and stay open in such a space? It’s a privilege to think in the in-between – and just because power structures are not invited doesn’t mean they disappear.
These tensions are not a problem to be solved. They are the dynamic forces from which something new might eventually arise.
5. Perspective: Transformation Design as the Art of Shaping Transitions
At the Transformation Design Academy in Berlin, we understand design not as control, but as the curation of transitions. From permaculture and social practice, we know that new things often emerge at the edges. Design from the edges means consciously perceiving what is shifting. And supporting what might offer more complex and fitting responses to today’s challenges. Here are a few takeaways from Lakefront on how we might shape transitions:
Design here begins with resonance, not structure. Those shaping the project don’t start with a concept paper, but with resonance. What stirs something in me? What feels authentic? And what might make strategic sense but somehow remains hollow? Where do I sense resistance or disturbance within myself? What wants to be said, through me, but in service of the larger whole?
Meaning doesn’t arise through announcements. Lakefront isn’t built around a single shared purpose handed down from above. Meaning has to develop co-creatively and in its own time. That takes presence and patience to endure the not-knowing.
Transitions are multidimensional. Change always involves an inner movement before it reflects back into outer systems. This step is made conscious here and is given more time than in many other projects. Yet the outcomes remain unpredictable. Like a kinetic mobile, even small shifts in one part can ripple through the whole – delicately balanced, constantly adjusting, never fully still.
Design must be able to hold tension. Between ideal and reality, between momentum and exhaustion, between longing and power. You have to be able to hold these tensions. Without becoming cynical.
Humans shape spaces – and spaces shape humans. Humans put their imprint on both the physical and social environment. Especially in the beginning, when everything is open and undefined, a wide range of futures is possible. But such openness cannot last forever. Any process that aims to have an impact must eventually take form – or it risks dissolving. And once form emerges, it will never fit everyone. That’s the paradox. Over time, places begin to reflect back on people: they shape those who inhabit them, or become a misfit for some of those who once helped shape them.
Maybe this is the most important lesson: transformational developments don't happen despite uncertainty and openness – but through it. And they live through people willing to work exactly where the old no longer holds and the new has yet to be named.
Hopefully, it will succeed here. And by the way – there’s still room for those who want to contribute.
Huge thanks to Stephen Reid and John-Certus Lack for hosting and introducing me to the place and the community!
Kommentare