Katya Romanova
• – • Forum Factory Berlin
About the speaker
Katya Romanova is a Berlin-based social designer and co-founder of the network re:imagine your city. She holds degrees in Teaching Languages and Visual Communication and is currently pursuing a Master’s in Public Design.
Her practice focuses on urban transformation and in-between spaces, with an emphasis on participatory and community-based formats. In her current role at the citizen participation office Pankow beteiligt, she communicates construction and development projects in the district and explores ways to empower Berliners to take a more active role in shaping their city.
Through her podcast berlin bones, Katya explores the transformation of Berlin’s cemeteries into multifunctional areas, featuring playgrounds, community gardens, beehives, cafés, and exhibition chapels.
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Additional details
TALK: Designing cemeteries as spaces of encounter? Berlin cemeteries are multifunctional urban spaces where life, death, and culture intersect. In Berlin—a city known for its solitude—cemeteries can, perhaps unexpectedly, serve as meeting points, bringing people together through the universal themes of death, mourning, and commemoration.
In this talk, Katya Romanova shares her perspective on the potential role of Berlin’s more than 200 cemeteries as spaces of dialogue, at a time when some of them are being closed or transformed under the city’s cemetery development plan. Drawing from public interventions such as the Deadly Matters pop-up cemetery café and the podcast berlin bones, Katya invites to reflect on these questions: How can we balance making cemeteries welcoming and engaging while maintaining reverence? Where do we draw the line between the living and the dead? What is the future of cemeteries and what role can we as designers and creatives play in shaping the transition?
