About Village One
What is Village One?
Village One is a Berlin-based worker-owned cooperative for ethical design and technology. The studio describes itself in its own words: "Village One: a worker-owned studio for ethical design and technology… We are an experienced team of researchers, designers and software engineers, working with clients big and small on their digital projects. We champion economic democracy and social justice, which is why we are incorporated as a worker's cooperative, collectively owned by all employees."
Founded in 2022 ("In 2022 we set out to create a new kind of company—one that radically rethinks ownership, participation and collaboration, with curiosity and strong values"), Village One has shipped work for public-interest and journalism clients including Publix (Berlin's "house for journalism and democracy"), award-winning conversation platform My Country Talks, type foundry TypeMates, Berlin fashion platform PLATTE, the German government's Sovereign Tech Agency (open-source resilience programme), and Media Lab Bayern.
The studio's services span digital strategy, research and prototyping; branding and design systems; digital products, platforms and infrastructure; custom website design and development; and technical consulting. The team works in Elixir Phoenix, Ruby on Rails, Next.js, React, TypeScript, Node.js, GSAP, Framer Motion, Craft CMS, Craft Commerce, Kirby, GraphQL and serverless architectures.
Where will I work?
Village One e.G. (the German cooperative registration) is based at Holzweidepfad 9, 13403 Berlin, Germany — a member of the cooperative auditing association PkmG. The team is fully distributed: "We are a fully distributed team, embracing asynchronous communication and running on a 4-day work week."
What is the Village One team like?
The cooperative is deliberately small. Verbatim: "We are a deliberately small and nimble organization, operating with minimal overhead and maximum character. Instead of perpetual growth our vision is to scale by replication, forming a network of aligned co-ops over time. Our aim is to assemble a team of roughly 12 people over time, because we think that's a healthy size for a creative team."
The six current worker-owners are Dorothée Schwartzmann (strategy), Harry Keller (development), Julia Shkatova (design), Meg Krawielitzki (design), Niklas Sonnenschein (development), and John Ripmeester (development). Dorothée Schwartzmann and Harry Keller serve as the cooperative's Board. Co-founder Christoph Rauscher remains a frequent collaborator after returning to freelance in early 2025. Other regular collaborators include Anja Meiners (type and icon systems), Marcel Bachran (branding and interface), Nina Bender (data visualisation), Paul Götze (backend) and Tommaso Marmo ("Village One's connections weaver, community organizer and indie tech / open-source activist").
Client testimonials name Leonid A. Klimov (Science Editor, dekoder), Andreas Karsten (CEO, Youth Policy Labs), Powen Shiah (Communications Manager, Sovereign Tech Fund), Patricia Leu (Co-Director, Prototype Fund), and Claudia Chzwalisz (Founder + CEO, DemocracyNext).
Work-Life Balance
Verbatim from the vision page: "We are a fully distributed team, embracing asynchronous communication and running on a 4-day work week. We are continuously adapting our practices towards a more equitable work environment. Creative work needs focus and time to blossom, not fake urgency or hustle culture—therefore we enable deep work through calm workflows, combined with flexibility regarding work times and location, real autonomy and self-organization."
Perks and Benefits
Worker-cooperative ownership: all employees collectively own Village One e.G. Fully distributed team embracing asynchronous communication. Calm-tech values: deep work over hustle, real autonomy, self-organisation. Non-profit clients and cooperatives receive a 10% "common good discount" on every invoice. The studio is open about not currently hiring: "We are not currently hiring, but you can sign up for our newsletter to be the first to know about upcoming open positions!"