Valeria Federighi, Edoardo Bruno, Tommaso Listo, Sofia Leoni and Camilla Forina

Architects appear torn between pursuing an irreducible specificity of their profession and the need to constantly negotiate that specificity with a variety of other actors, from the politician to the technician to the citizens’ association. Architectural design is a collective practice, but the model that is transmitted and reproduced in the design studio is often that of architects who follow their own unique, creative idea. Students learn that design is about ideas, professionals know that ideas – even good ones – are to be negotiated, modified and legitimated through continuous and energy-intensive exchanges with the other agents that participate in the transformation of space. Can this particular competence be taught, or should students just wait and learn it through trial and error, after graduating? Ackowledging the social and political complexity of the contemporary world, the pedagogical experiment of the Great Game tries to address the need to move from individual creativity to collective practice. Within a game of strategies, each group of practitioners has a different client, clients have a story, their intentions are not always clear, they don’t know exactly what they want, they change their mind; norms and regulations are not always clear, they can be negotiated, they go undetected for a time; economic interests change, developers withdraw support, flashy narratives turn out to be more effective than well thought-out volume compositions. The practitioners’ primary objective is that of defining viable strategies and associating the right set of actors to carry them through, thus developing an understanding of design practice as collective practice, and of the mechanisms that make it possible to socialize ideas into the real world of political exchanges. The game has been tested in two successive academic years: this paper will trace its theoretical positioning, the way it has unfolded and its possibilities for application.

Rene Lisac and Kristina Careva

In the last ten years the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Zagreb has been developing and practicing inclusive methodologies for innovative planning and programming developments in the public domain. Stakeholders from different sectors (civil, government, academic and business) have various perspectives on what public interest is and how it should be achieved. In complex strategic decision making SDGs play an important role as criteria in evaluating certain action, solution or policy and its benefits to the environment, the social realm or economics. Intensive participation and interdisciplinary Quad Helix processes are proven to ensure that innovative practice is in line with public interest, sustainable development goals, and, most of all, is harmonized between different sector stakeholders. Parallel and intertwined with architectural and planning activities, designing and managing an inclusive QH process is a task by itself, with specific challenges to overcome: detecting the challenge holder as well as key stakeholders to be fully inclusive but efficient; involve stakeholders continuously from the beginning, balance involvement depending on their role importance, and provide relevant feedback; moderate discussions dynamically so participants can equally express and achieve consensus; process participative data to be relevant for planning; design the QH process individually for each task… We have selected three recent projects developed within the Faculty of Architecture that follow above mentioned inclusive planning principles and tackle the challenges. “Spatial model for sustainable planning of abandoned Adriatic islands based on Biševo example” proposes integral sustainable strategic planning, on a test example of a small remote island. A masterplan for the new central urban zone of Brdovec county develops innovative urban structure between rural and urban, with carefully balanced urban typology and mix of facilities for citizen needs. Programming a new central square in Petrinja after earthquake demolitions involves citizens to create a new optimistic identity.

Nadia Charalambous, Effrosyni Roussou and Christina Panayi

The importance of empowering and engaging citizens in the shaping of their living environments to ensure a sustainable and affordable development and promote a sense of community has been highlighted in recent years (UN-Habitat). Citizens and professionals (architects, public institutions, private enterprises) are called to adopt new roles within the spatial design and provision process, which often challenges the ability of the latter to respond effectively to the rising need for a community-engaged design approach. The necessity to train future architects in conceptualising and implementing solutions, within a transdisciplinary framework, that uphold the sustainable development goals, reveals the need to revisit, assess and rework the relevant pedagogical approaches.

This paper reflects on a community-engaged housing studio approach and a subsequent design & build co-creation workshop at the Department of Architecture, University of Cyprus, in the design and development of a public space in a residential neighbourhood in Nicosia. The housing studio incorporates principles of inclusivity and sustainability and aims to create the conditions for an integrated framework of achieving sustainable urban governance and to initiate a community of practice between students, educators, researchers, enterprises, the community and the local municipality, fostering a participatory, co-creation process. Drawing from the tools and methods of live studios and Urban Living Labs, this transdisciplinary process involves the aforementioned participants at various levels and stages, and follows a circular methodology of (1) assessing and understanding, (2) engaging and co-creating, (3) co-designing and implementing and (4) assessing and evaluating.

Reflecting on the outcomes, the paper discusses the opportunities and limitations of a community-engaged design methodology to expose future graduates to real world contingencies and through interaction with different stakeholders, to encourage a sense of community and to empower the citizens as decision makers who have a sense of responsibility for their residential environment.

Oana Paval and Maria Cristina Găvozdea 

In Romania, the abandoned post-industrial buildings or sites were valued by developers based on a tabula-rasa, top-down approach, by demolishing the existing and building commercial areas or housing units at maximum capacity, even above.

We propose a different approach based on participatory planning, using the Urban Design Management (UDM) methodology. It was developed at the University of Helsinki and brought to us through a Social Challenges EU project.

UDM is based on the concept of integrating as much value as possible into the development process, for most stakeholders. It is an iterative planning approach, aiming to generate a shared vision, development strategy and/or a masterplan solution. It is a participative process including both professional and non-professional diverse perspectives, that far outreaches the requirements of formal planning.

The first two applications of the UDM in Romania were the former Amylon factory (and slaughterhouse) and the Independența industrial site. Both sites are situated at the verges of the intra-muros historical centre of Sibiu, being part of the XIXth century industrial belt that developed on the banks of Cibin river.

Amylon is a 4ha site that was demolished in 2008. The participatory planning process unfolded in 2019, leading to a masterplan solution for a balanced, mixed-use development including apartments, offices, commerce, public facilities and public spaces. This represents a novelty in recent Romanian planning practice.

Independența industrial site is a 9ha brownfield, the largest in Sibiu. It has over 15 abandoned buildings, some of which are listed as monuments. The participatory process is ongoing.

Both experiences have proven extremely valuable and all stakeholders have well appreciated them. Thus we promote this methodology in brownfield regeneration and other complex projects, as it can be an active instrument in the formation of the New European Bauhaus culture, in Romania.

Kristina Careva and Rene Lisac

To understand the context, from the physical through the sociological to the economic, the architect must conduct field research. For a long time, that primarily meant a tour of the location, but recently, the importance of collecting the opinions of all actors of spatial development is becoming highly recognized. Roughly speaking, these are four groups: the local government members; various expert groups representatives; representatives of companies interested in investment and development; and specific or future potential users. Moderating the conversation of all these groups representatives is a demanding yet rewarding task.

Since the architect already takes into account and tries to reconcile the views of various professions in his daily work, he could be a good moderator. Therefore practical teaching of this nature is advisable to be included in architectural education. The theoretical foundations need to be supplemented by active work on a specific task. The elective course “Participatory design of space” at the Faculty of architecture, University of Zagreb, introduces students to the importance and modes of applying the participation of all relevant stakeholders in creating a cognitive fund for solving a design or planning task. The topic of each years’ task is formed based on the needs of a community and its readiness for participatory activities that range from information through surveys and interviews to involvement in implementation.

The classes held so far provide interesting insights into specific situations and point out the importance of introducing students to the possibilities of comprehensive fieldwork and research in order to solve real problems of today. The challenges identified in that process are: understanding the broader context of inclusive planning and one’s own design role; maintaining a balance between one’s own professional creativity and the participatory information gathered; objective information filtering; approaching the interlocutor.

Federica Vannucchi and Mia Roth-Čerina

That architecture is a multidisciplinary practice is not novelty. In western history, architects describe their profession as an assemblage of expertise which, one might think, can hardly be performed by just one individual. This is the case in Vitruvius’ The Ten Books on Architecture where he stated that an architect has to be conversant in matters related to geometry, history, philosophy, music, medicine, jurisprudence, astronomy, and the theory of the heavens. This is repeated today in the Article 46 dedicated to “Training of Architects” included in the EU’s Professional Qualifications Directive 2005/36/EC where an architect should understand fine arts, technology, human sciences, environmental issues, building regulations, just to name a few. What complicates matters though is that an architect is not only to be versatile in a variety of different disciplines other than architecture, but that the profession of architecture is to exist “in society,” mediating “between people and buildings, and between buildings and their environment,” responding to “human needs and scale,” as the Directive states. What this being “in society” means and demands is at the core of architecture remaking today. Society has been renamed at any turn of architecture thinking, such as in the early 20th century modernism with “masses” or the 1960s CIAM discussions with “the greatest number” and today’s use of “communities.” The discussion of who is the user has also brought the problem of the relationship between user and space maker. Discussions on modes of collaborations and participation have been central to architecture at least since the 1960s. This research focuses on the modes of collaboration between architects and users, what the Directive calls “society.” It does so by critically addressing and comparing modality of collaborations within four main paradigms: experiences of feminist collectives; socialist corporativism; environmental care; and racial displacement and discrimination.

Ognen Marina

In the morning of July 26, 1963, Skopje was struck by an earthquake that left more than 80% of buildings in ruins. This unfortunate event was followed by unprecedented effort by UN to reconstruct the city. Skopje was considered an international symbol of solidarity as it was rebuilt with the aid of almost 90 countries, demonstrating the ability of the international community led by the UN for a large endeavor of constructing the future city.

This project was initiated by Ernest Weissmann, a Croatian born pioneer of Modernism, member of CIAM and vice-director of at the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). Weissman saw the opportunity in the Skopje project to create the role model “world city” through which the humanity will demonstrate the capacity of creation of wellbeing through collaborative effort. The idea of the “world city” has been brought to his attention during his work at the Le Corbusier’s office in Paris on the avant-garde proposal for the League of Nations in 1926.

Following this idea, world architects were invited in Skopje, demonstrating the potential of Tanges’ Metabolist architecture, Bakema’s Open Society and Doxiadis’s Ekistics to design and reconstruct cities and societies with humanistic ideas and concepts that are inherent to architecture and urban design. The paper explores the contexts and networks of political and institutional actors that enabled such an ambitious international project, mapping the theories and concepts that were fundamental to the main project proposals and provides better understanding of the capacity of contemporary architecture to exercise and work with concepts of solidarity, just society and urban reconstruction.

Hans Leinfelder

Literally translated ‘Bauhaus’ means ‘Build house’. The notion seems to resonate the often uncritical attitude of educational programs in architecture and urbanism towards greenfield development. To be honest, the number of assignments that challenge students to design something new on pristine land still overwhelms the number of questions that ask them to think about an architecture that goes along with reclaiming open space. As the European Commission has set the ambition in 2015 to evolve for all member states to a situation of no net land take in 2050, it is time for architecture schools to reset their ambitions too.

Tackling the effects of climate change is not merely coping with inundations, drought and urban heat islands. At least as important is desealing soil because of its vital role for carbon sequestration, evaporation, water infiltration, mineral cycles, biodiversity, etc. The master program in urbanism and planning at the Faculty of Architecture at KU Leuven has been exploring, in different collaborations between teachers, students and researchers, possibilities of reclaiming open space from the already built up area. Specific assignments have risen awareness about the large number of abandoned constructions in open space that could easily be removed to allow for new development at better locations. Students were also challenged to design the removal of this ‘spatial garbage’, as we called it, and the situation afterwards. But also oversized road infrastructure or kilometers of rural roads to serve merely one dwelling, terraces and driveways in private gardens, farmsteads of retiring farmers that would otherwise be turned into residential villas with large gardens and private horse pastures, have passed the scene.
Making architecture and urbanism students well aware of the importance of unsealed soil helps “pave the way” for new and essential strategies. Isn’t it about time for ‘Abbauhaus’?

Riva Lava

Architecture that evolves with the landscape -both natural and cultural- is a call to re-examine today’s realities within the framework of climate change, limited resources and an unprecedented flow of migration around the globe; furthermore, landscape is an important constituent of place making along the European South, where well-being and a sense of freedom stem from the moderate climate and the prolonged life outdoors. Natural environment, local materials and landscape are also discussed as the treasures of the Southern European cultural continuum where inherent values of heritage and anonymous architecture are preserved. Landscape is investigated in its multitude and intrinsic nature, as imaginary locus, mindscape and landform. As part of the New European Bauhaus discussions which were conducted across Europe, landscape emerges as a significant driver for architectural aesthetics and life supporting designs, while it offers the context for reconsidering the true needs of existence.

Emel Birer, Esin Hasgül, İlke Tekin, Öncü Başoğlan Avşar, Mihriban Duman, Furkan Balcı and Fulya Pelin Cengizoğlu

The basic design-Vorkurs-education of Bauhaus had two main effects on 20th century design education: Firstly, it was the practice of extracting knowledge from object viewed through abstraction, enabling this knowledge to lead to new processes, and second was to give student ability to question conventions to produce a visual information.

The underlying methods of Bauhaus were revisited in visualization for exhibition which includes outcomes of a workshop. Organized as an extension of “Architectural Episodes 02: New Dialogues in Architectural Education and Practice” International Symposium held online on 24-25 March 2022, a collaborative workshop was conducted by Istanbul Kültür University and Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University, Department of Architecture. Main theme of workshop was forest fires started on 29th July 2021 in various districts of Muğla province in Turkey as a major national and global event. To visualize fire, descriptive analysis was used as a methodology. Within participation of students at both universities, a visual archive was created through infographics, mapping, diagramming, sketching, narrating and so forth; and a collective narrative composed two perspectives to fire disaster was produced.

Main goal in this visualization of climate change, which is the agenda of 21st century, was to rethink aims of original Bauhaus movement that emerged at the beginning of 20th century. In workshop, it was aimed to rethink aesthetic values with their social and cultural dimensions beyond material beauty, and to design while raising awareness about nature, while addressing these urgent issues that concern the entire ecosystem, from macro to micro scale, from individual to society, from human to non-human, from nature to built environment. As a collective narrative, the visualization for exhibition finds supports with the idea that design is a learned task of producing knowledge rather than taught and reinterprets Bauhaus methodologies to produce a “Collaborative Narrative Using New Information Methods”.

Adriano Dessì

The New European Bauhaus doesn’t propose just a new way of interpreting health and welfare into a new sustainable productive paradigm but may well determine a deep re-establishment of our way of conceiving and inhabiting the European area. All along the Twentieth Century and at the beginning of the new, cities have been the greatest human aspiration places but resulted in consumption models of natural resources – ground, air, water, vegetation – to the degree of “being human on earth” (Berque A, 1996) reached a critical point. In the same period, countryside has been “forgotten” although it is the place where the human knowledge growing, mostly of the technological one, is certainly more than in the cities (Koolhaas R, 2018).

The new Bauhaus deal, over the very pandemic period, has enabled to reflect on the manifold continental crises consequences but has also increased that human space re-establishing role of “design” starting from models radically different from the past.

To this effect, the paper proposes two perspectives: (a) tracing into the multiple forms of historical European countryside – from the “inhabited” one (Donadieu P, 2004) of the major continental plains to peripheral polyculture areas, from Mediterranean gardens and agricultural cities to multifunctional farmhouses – some paradigms which capture these new deep-changing energies; (b) interpreting European countryside as “coevolution” field with cities and as a theatre of techno-ecological development enabled to reformulate the human combination of producing/inhabiting into SDGs scenario. Both perspectives will be illustrated through some modern and contemporary landscape design experiences which were outstanding for their innovation with the aim of constructing a first state of art of countryside design into a new sustainable continental landscape vision.

Agatino Rizzo, Kristina Ek and Lars Vikström

The high ambitions for renewable carbon technologies, increasing electricity demand and technological developments are opening more opportunities in small-scale generation. This may push zero-carbon electricity production closer to the final users/prosumers, of which the majority lives in cities and urbanised areas.

Over the years, we have used design thinking methods for urban design research projects to explore the potentials to innovate planning methods for the ensuing urban energy transition (Rizzo, 2017; Katsou et al., 2020; Morata et al., 2020; Lidelow et al., 2019; Rizzo et al., 2020; 2021). The central point of our work is increasing democracy and participation in the restructuring of cities and society under climate change and energy transformation.

In this article we examine what factors may affect prosumer’s (producer and consumer of energy) acceptance of small-scale Photovoltaic (PV) integrated in a residential area in Sweden. We use a mixed method approach, combining a pilot survey and design thinking workshops for residents.

Our design workshops were carried out through participatory mapping and creative model making of possible PV applications in different locations. The results of our workshops were later discussed with experts and planners from the local municipality and energy company. Results show that there is a potential for small-scale PV integration in urban areas and that co-design plays an important factor for both acceptance and bottom up empowerment of potential prosumers.

Teresa Calix, José Pedro Sousa and João Pedro Xavier 

In the 20th century, technology gained world scale and accelerated our time. We believed that we were freeing ourselves from geographical, corporeal, and temporal ties. However, beyond all the climatic changes that we were devaluing, the covid-19 pandemic made our human and vulnerable side more evident. It became clear that we should move towards the 21st century, recognizing the paradigm shift that leads to a new urban condition as NEB strives to inspire.

Financing pressure cannot admit easy (and bad) solutions. Southern European countries face common climatic and social threats. If they strengthen their ability to cope, they can develop together social and nature-based solutions, sustainable while still accessible, affordable, inclusive, and aesthetically qualified. This challenged 6 southern architecture schools to create NEBgS. Under the umbrella of education several co-design thematic events took place in 2021. One of them was The Question of Housing, coordinated by Porto School.

Considering that cities and urban territories are a priority issue, the discussions recognized that housing is a central question for our common future. The main challenges were listed: the right to adequate housing intertwined with the different fabrics as an essential condition for reducing social inequalities and moving forward; design solutions as key strategy to ensure resilient and adequate buildings; the critical dimensions of a new paradigm that imposes the long life of the building stock while ensuring social integration, comfort, and energy efficiency; the articulation between intervention measures in the built heritage and the need to revisit, recycle, reuse, retrofit, are key words at the present; and learning and closing the gap between academic research and the institutional framework is crucial.

The QoH demands, as before, an answer that goes further the individual action and depends on our cooperation in the construction of holistic solutions for an inclusive and sustainable tomorrow.

Khansa Dhaouadi and Pierre Leclercq

To deal with global challenges we face such as climate change, the New European Bauhaus vision depends on educated and empowered citizens. According to this initiative, architecture and urban planning are only effective when a multidisciplinary approach is applied. This is even more important when integrating sustainability into design education and research.

This paper presents the results of an experimental study conducted during four months of the first semester of a master’s degree program in civil engineering and architecture at the University of Liège and as part of an integrated design process. In this case study, the design studio is not only connected to a Sustainable Architecture and Urban Design course but also, to multidisciplinary interventions provided by different professionals and experts that combine teaching and practice. These interventions include contributions from several fields such as architecture, civil engineering, building envelope, structure, fire safety, heating, ventilation, air-conditioning, and sustainability issues.
21 students are challenged to work in teams through a collaborative learning process and so to develop in-depth knowledge and understanding of sustainability.

Our exploratory study is mainly based on examining the whole design process with teaching methods and learning outcomes. Data are collected via questionnaires and interview surveys to figure out students’ feedback on this experience.

The analysis reveals that professionals’ and experts’ interventions foster the integration of sustainability criteria through different design process phases within an interdisciplinary approach. This paradigm is developed in a holistic way of design thinking that goes hand in hand with all the functional, aesthetic, and technological aspects of the design process while respecting the specific contextual requirements.

This paper argues for more transfers between professional practice and teaching for a new generation of conscious architects and designers aware of the current environmental issues.

Kestutis Zaleckis, Jurga Vitkuviene, Laura Jankauskaite-Jureviciene, Indre Grazuleviciute-Vileniske and Vilma Karvelyte-Balbieriene

The modernistic urbanism treated cities as top-down way constructed machines and caused a significant transformation form city of places to city of spaces which could not be effectively addresses even if New Urbanism or related models are formally employed in urban planning. It should be recognized that urban place creation and placemaking is not possible without effective public participation which because of various reasons, especially in Lithuania, is not effective. The presented research is based on combination of two approaches while working in historical Šančiai neighborhood community in Kaunas. The first approach is based on the principles of tactical urbanism for collection of local authentic data about three aspects of neighborhood life: collective memory, present usage of public spaces based on modified sociotope approach and interaction with nature in ecological, recreational and social terms. For implementation of the project local inhabitants have collected data in the three online maps: memory map, present map, nature map. The second approach is based on the idea of simulative modelling for complex urban systems which allows to reflect bottom-up processes essential for urban development both in present and predicted situations. During the project, the location spots and the results of content analysis focused on identification of emotions attached to precise neighborhood spaces, based on data entered by inhabitants were used as an additional input into mathematical graph based simulative models. The results of modelling demonstrated fluctuation of the most important public spaces (e.g., walking routes, intelligible buildings, reachable central locations) depending on various urban life scenarios (e.g., working days, weekends, mornings, evenings, celebrations, etc.) and could be used as a part of decision support system while discussing urban development ideas between interested stakeholders and local community. Results of the project demonstrate an effective way to combine public participation and modelling phase of urban planning.

Camilo Cerro

The UN estimates that 68% of the world population will live in urban areas by 2050. This, combined with the overall population growth could add 2.5 billion people to already overcrowded cities. Prompting many countries to face challenges in meeting the needs of their growing urban populations. Reconciling urban sprawl, verticality and the lack of housing will force us to adapt to greater density and new housing typologies. With more and more people moving into cities, understanding the key trends in urbanization will be crucial in implementing the Sustainable Development goals proposed by the UN. To address the housing crisis, and to become less car and carbon dependent, countries need to densify its job-rich metro areas so that more people can afford to live there and walk, bike, or take public transportation to get to work and back. A sustainable set of solutions are needed that are designed to address a net positive approach to dwelling. The idea that technology will fix complex and systemic problems like climate change, poverty, the housing crisis, or healthcare is simplistic if we do not also change our existing models of living. Co-housing has the potential to be well suited to promote social, ecological, and environmental sustainability while providing an adaptive new dwelling typology. In its urban form it could be designed to add density to urban areas that are facing a housing crisis while solving other sustainable issues. This paper will present the functional elements needed to produce systemic interdependence within a housing typology to address the climate crisis, create a closed loop system and to add to the quality of life of its users. A housing typology with social justice at its center, that empowers work, commerce and culture should be a right globally and the future of dwelling.

Mayka Garcia Hípola

This case study presents a new way to teach design studio based in the case study method employed by the business schools. In the same way the Bauhaus looked for a new way to teach and do architecture this case used the Frankfurt kitchen as a n example to debate things as important nowadays as prefabrication or the role of sociology and gender in architecture.

The mother of the built-in kitchen, Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, would have turned 120 in 2017. Reason enough to learn more about her Frankfurt kitchen and how it attained such renown. The Frankfurt Kitchen illustrates key principles of the 1920s: objectivity, functionalism, and above all, standardization. The concept of standardization was connected not only with production techniques, but also reflected the ideological position of the Bauhaus and Werkbund activists, who saw the uniform design of everyday objects as a contribution towards leveling the differences between classes.

The pros and cons of this type of kitchen are various and debatable. The kitchen worker and his/her isolation also is an issue to be considered. The organization of the different appliances in the longitudinal space of this kitchen conditions its use in a certain way following Taylorist ideas related to work and industrialization versus the leisure please of cooking.

The Frankfurt Kitchen was one of the models propagated for the “new life” of the “new man”. This case actualizes the concept to the 2020s and ask about how will be the “new kitchen” nowadays.

Neslihan Dostoglu

The formation of qualified environments requires evaluation of socio-cultural as well as physical aspects. The improvement of the physical quality of the environment means the production of safe, useful, and healthy interior and exterior spaces. In this context, sustainability, resilience and biodiversity have to be carefully considered in relation to the protection of the environment. However, in order for societies to continue their existence and to be reproduced, the environment has to bear meanings which reflect the values and needs of the users, and it has to be suitable for social changes. Unfortunately, our planet has been going through many problems during the last century, such as environmental crisis, migration, global health problems and gender inequality.

In this paper, the focus will be on challenges in achieving gender equality in architecture. Gender equality does not mean that women and men are exactly alike; it means that we have the equal rights to enjoy the same resources, opportunities and protections, regardless of gender. Actually, this is a fundamental human right that is the foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world. Actions towards gender equality should include involving women in social and economic participation and decision-making processes, and giving women access to leadership positions with the same conditions as men. Empowerment could be done by including women’s viewpoints in design fields, raising the status of women through education, awareness, literacy and training.

While many women architects and designers around the world are trying to progress in their career, they either leave the profession by hitting a glass ceiling or face various difficulties. Recent studies reveal that men and women have different approaches to thinking and structuring experience and organizing knowledge. Therefore, providing both women and men equal opportunities in architecture will be a contribution to the improvement of the built environment.

Arianna Scaioli

Looking at the Old Bauhaus of Gropius, the topic of gender equality was already present; there would be no distinction, showing a progressive vision. It was, however, equality only on paper, with little validation in practice. The New European Bauhaus reframes past ambitions, encompassing the new SDGs and assuming a crucial role in guiding spatial transformations bridging the intersection between spatial and social/gender justice. The contribution proposes to recast the discipline of architecture by its encounter with feminist methodologies, investigating through a research-by-design approach the spatialization of gender equality. Accordingly, it assumes a gendered perspective – where architecture is called upon to (re)construct women’s condition, movement and visibility in space. By recognizing the relevance of a design experimentation that modifies the ‘hardware and the software’ namely the deep formal urban structure and the ethical-cultural dimension, it embraces the concepts of “care” (Tronto) “complexity and multiplicity” (Deleuze and Guattari) and the “right to the city” (Lefebvre). It questions the traditional narrative of the male standard, understanding whose perspectives are valued, how they are represented in the built environment and which are the uses. This approach re-weaves the relationship between gender, body, and architecture, spatializing them in the materiality of space, and unveiling the networks of power and how people carve out space, which is negotiated and appropriated. Body as perception, movement, appropriation, and measure; where in its multiple interactions with space, it becomes an active medium between design and space, holding the generative power to inform spatial transformations. However, through their continuous interaction, bodies and behaviours are also modified. The paper presents a series of case studies, discussing themes, tools and methods of a feminist approach in architectural design, fostering gender equality in space.

Alessandro Massarente, Michela De Poli, Mariagrazia Marcarini, Alessandro Tessari and Elena Verzella

This research experience was developed in the frame of an “idea consultation” involving 20 Italian schools of architecture and aiming at the renovation of 18 existing educational complexes in the city of Mantua.

Our research group designed a complex consisting of primary school, kindergarten and nursery school, conceived as an urban ecosystem interacting with the multi-ethnic community characterizing the Lunetta neighborhood.

The proposed permeable linear system multiplies the different active environments available to the school and neighborhood communities in order to involve local people and promote social interaction.

The system, indeed, is designed as a thick vegetated band, articulated in cultivated soils and botanical spaces inside the school (in the patios) and outside (in the hanging gardens) which are conceived to let the neighborhood “breathe”, but also to foster playful, educational and social functions, using landscape natural resources to stimulate new relationships between people, places, spaces.

A school with welcoming spaces open to the community even after school hours; a school in the school, where students, teachers and inhabitants of all ages can meet and share common spaces where to carry out various educational as well as recreational activities, promoting inclusion and personalization of students’ educational experience.

Spaces in which relationship between inside and outside, classrooms, common space, and external spaces of patios, in the different declinations of the 3 schools, forms a “school for the five senses”. A school in which learning activities intentionally promote the “multiple intelligence” and the concept of “biophilia”, so that the “outside” represents a “third educator” where to experiment innovative teaching methodologies.

As the “quiet area”, visually connected with classrooms, where all children, not just pupils with deficits or severe autistic syndrome, can relax, reflect or engage in alternative activities that are more motivating for them, without being excluded or marginalized in separate spaces.

Placido Lizancos-Mora

There is a plan to be able to opt for a better future, and this is the well-known 2030 Agenda. An opportunity for us to promote prosperity while protecting the planet.

The seventeen sustainable development goals and the targets linked to them contained in the 2030 agenda seek, among other objectives, the elimination of poverty, the universalization of quality education, achieve equal rights between genders, the defence of the environment, the construction of a decent and safe human habitat or lay the foundations to build equitable and inclusive development. It does not aspire to provide material goods but to ensure human rights.

It is not easy to find a single objective or goal of the global agenda, as well as the associated rights, in which architecture is not present in one way or another.

That is why an emergent stream of thought interprets that architecture, as a facilitator of other rights, should be included in the set of fundamental rights built by the global agenda and guaranteed by the States.

Beyond the academy’s walls, numerous formal social and political spaces have recognized the architecture right.

In this context, updating the relationship between education, architecture theory, and its social function is crucial for the academy. The academy needs a renewed construct adapted to the global agenda to survive the trivialization of its formal methods. It would be about revising our traditional positions before the world, from “the will to learn following the people” or “the necessity to teach the people” to a third way. As announced by Siza in the seventies: to direct all efforts towards the main objective, sharing with the general public the will to create a physical world to serve society.

That is, to assume architecture as a right of the people executed by professionals.

Karolina Tulkowska

Housing needs change depending on the social situation, financial and technological potentials, the availability of functional solutions, and aesthetic expectations. An apartment is more than a building or part of it. This is the space where the Home is being built.

The subject of the article is a discussion on a future residential building that reflects contemporary needs. The considerations will be preceded by analyzes of the historical and existing dwelling models. The debate will start with the idea of a modernist housing estate, its origins, and conversions. The social, economic, and spatial transformations, which cause the need for change will form a background for the contemporary dwelling design guidelines.

Josep Muntañola Thornberg

There is a key point in architectural education that should be clarified to improve the legitimation of architects and urban planners in the digital and global world of today: The relationships between experience and knowledge in architectural and urban design theories and practices.

Our proposal refers to the historical seminar in MOMA in 1948 about a similar topic, since it is the definition of modernity related to the old and new Bauhaus experiences that is involved in architectural education today. Taking into account the impact of new disciplines in education, such as neurology, the cognitive studies and the sociocultural historical studies, we want to study how the link between experience and knowledge can disappear, and with it, the possibility of a truthful architectural education when historical analyses falsifies the existential social conditions in which knowledge emerges in concrete educational processes.

This is extremely relevant today, when artificial intelligence wants to produce knowledge from very limited scientific laws and without taking into account the artistic and cultural dimensions of architecture and planning. The social dialogy between the brain and the machine is then crucial for a good definition of modern architecture today, if not, the dialogue between criticism and discernment on the one hand, and culture, in the other hand, which is a basic dialogue in general education, will be eliminated from our schools of architecture.

Lisa Beisswanger

The stage workshop was integral to the historical Bauhaus. Experimenting with dance and theater, it added body, space, and movement studies to the design curriculum. The interdisciplinary “High-Level Roundtable” of the New European Bauhaus initiative falls somewhat short in representing this field. Therefore, this paper literally calls to action. It outlines the importance of a New European Bauhaus Stage, speculates on how such a project may look like, and critically reflects on its promises and pitfalls. What can we learn from the historical Bauhaus Stage? What can the disciplines of dance and theater offer to contemporary design and architecture education? How can the initiative contribute to a “sustainable and inclusive future”, as envisioned by the overarching project?

Briefly diving into the Bauhaus stage’s history and the ideas of its protagonist Oskar Schlemmer will make clear: the suggestion cannot be to revive the historical workshop, led by a “master” and built on western, anthropocentric, and essentialist views. Instead, the proposition is a radically decentral pan-European think-and-do-tank, an interdisciplinary network connecting design and architecture with the fields of dance, performance, and theater studies. Within this network, a core group develops research and funding schemes to foster collaborative experimentation and offers methodological guidance for architecture educators interested in expanding their teaching.

Given the growing demand for an inclusive architecture with positive experiential dimensions, it seems more important than ever to unlock embodied knowledge and enhance participatory approaches. However, this also carries the risk of succumbing to the exploitative patterns of immaterial labor and neoliberal experience economy. The New European Bauhaus Stage can become a forum to explore such issues. It has the potential to act as a catalyst for embodied knowledge and practices in design education, and help define what abstract buzzwords like “human” and “sustainable” really mean to diverse individuals in varying contexts.

Yahya Sepehri

The Bauhaus was active for only about fifteen years (1919-1933), but despite this short lifespan, it was able to be very influential in the field of education and practice worldwide. This study examines the causes of Bauhaus’s success and global influence from the perspective of the three pillars of each school, teacher, student, and place of education. Bauhaus recruited major, international figures and well-known avant-garde artists associated with prominent artistic groups around the world. Bauhaus also hired aspiring junior masters. This team of teachers made the Bauhaus dynamic, progressive and influential. Students of Bauhaus were young people from over 29 countries. They comprised a relatively diverse group in terms of age, gender, and nationality. These Bauhäusler were ambitious to forge a new type of artist. A number of students educated at the Bauhaus became leading masters and influential teachers at the school. The Bauhaus building and its furniture in Dessau were designed by the school’s teachers and students. This building provided an opportunity for their ideas to be realized without hindrance. The architecture and spaces of this building enabled the interaction of teachers and students and made it possible to implement the school curriculum and education system. The building became a symbol of the Bauhaus principles and became a model for inspiration around the world.

Sophie Mak-Schram

What does it mean to ‘rescue’ a modernist project like the Bauhaus to envision a future? The pedagogical emphasis of the Bauhaus, which sat at the core of its approach to society and the role aesthetic and design practices could play in this, was one premised on learning through making, interdisciplinary practices and design as an enabler, not just mirror, of socio-cultural aspirations and ambitions. What is striking now, over a century later, is how this alternative model of education continues to be espoused as the future. Given the developments in gender and postcolonial studies and the politicisation of education models, this paper critically considers what the Bauhaus has come to symbolise over the past century and what elements of its approach might be critically expanding for the field of design education today.

This consideration will focus on two strands: the internationalism and exchange it used as a central tenet of its critical model, and the issues of inclusion faced within its otherwise radical educational structure.

Recent publications reflecting on the Bauhaus, such as Bauhaus Imaginista (2019), trace the impact of both its socio-cultural approach and aesthetic across the world. Whilst design, and the cultural sector overall, has continued to be emphatically global in inspiration and reach, there has been a return to an emphasis on locality, particularly in the context of sustainability. In the realm of inclusion, recent texts signal the limitations of the Bauhaus’ vision: artists such as Anni Albers were sidelined into departments ‘appropriate’ for their gender, and the school was supported, and bore close relation to the nation-state via its funding and core students. This paper will reflect on the ways that Old Bauhaus has become used as a symbol, and what critical reflections and distance New Bauhaus might need to take from its modernist referent.

Anja Isabel Schneider

At a recent Digital-Live-Design conference (2021), bringing together Swiss art curator, critic and art historian Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Malian writer, film director, and cultural theorist Manthia Diawara and German author, producer and filmmaker Alexander Kluge, the discussion of the need for a New European Bauhaus for this century was addressed. One of the leading intellectual voices in Germany, Kluge specified that a new Bauhaus should not be “so rational and geometric as the historic Bauhaus.” Sparked by his cooperation with Diawara, Kluge made an appeal for a “European-African Bauhaus” in order “to rebuild our lives.” For Kluge this implies not only the architectural structures of houses or of landscapes, but also our inner faculties: “our thinking”, “our emotions”, “our souls” (Kluge, 2021).

This paper offers some reflections on Alexander Kluge’s critical vision in order to open up further inroads and new imaginaries. Cooperation, for Kluge, is key to achieving this (re-)orientation, one that is intrinsically related to the coming together of all the arts from distinct socio-cultural paradigms. Furthermore, what is needed, according to Manthia Diawara, are new forms of aesthetics, specifically an aesthetics of solidarity, to address the ecological crisis of the Anthropocene. How to sustain this critical stance that Kluge and Diawara advocate for in the conception of a new Bauhaus, all the while attending to its inclusiveness?

Within this critical positioning, I will revisit projekt Bauhaus, the 5-year project in which a critical inventory of the ideas of the historic Bauhaus was made. On the occasion of the completion of the project, the event Ciao Bauhaus! was held in 2019 at the Volksbühne Berlin 100 years after its founding, with participants, such as Beatriz Colomina, Mark Wigley and Alexander Kluge to reassess the old Bauhaus, “its utopian excesses, its immanent contradictions, and its potential for the present.”

Carla Collevecchio, Sonia Vázquez-Díaz and Zaida Garcia-Requejo

The professional practice in architecture is becoming increasingly heterogeneous, specialised and strongly dominated by digitalisation. However, architecture teaching programmes are progressively concentrated in time. It is necessary to consider rigorously on the teaching content and to determine which disciplinary bases need to be maintained or recovered.

The relationship between body and space, in which both interrelate and co-create, is fundamental. Space favours or restricts movements and actions, so it must be designed with full awareness of its consequences on living. To teach these concepts effectively, we turn our gaze to the Bauhaus, where apprentice architects and artists experimented with the human body: from the Vorkurs by Johannes Itten to the Theatre Workshop, firstly (and briefly) under Lothar Schreyer and later under Oskar Schlemmer (Droste, 2006).

The aim is that students reflect on their own body occupying a space and discover the concepts of affordance (Gibson, 1977) and inhabitability (Franco, 2009), i.e. how objects and spaces invite us to interact depending on their shape and perceptual characteristics. To this end, we introduce a first-year exercise developed at the University of Umeå, Sweden, by Professor Carla Collevecchio: The students, in small groups, have to design and build 1:1 a series of architectural artefacts that have the capacity to activate awareness of the interaction between body and space. Students discover and become aware of concepts such as geometry, structure, articulation, movement, material, surface, choreography and place, which go far beyond their surface meanings.

Space has an inescapable behavioural, psychological and emotional influence (Bonnes and Bonaiuto, 2002). It is therefore necessary to educate future architects on the importance of the design of space for its impact on people’s well-being. These architectural artefacts allow students to understand how the body can affect space and how space can affect the body.

Marianna Charitonidou

The paper examines the role of commoning practices in data-driven society, placing particular emphasis on their role in the establishment of new agendas in architectural education. As Patrick Bresnihan underscores, in “The More-than-human Commons: From Commons to Commoning”, “[t]he noun ‘commons’ has been expanded into the continuous verb ‘commoning’ to denote the continuous making and remaking of the commons through shared practice.” Stavros Stavrides’s claim that “[c]ommoning practices importantly produce new relations between people” is at the core this paper given that its main objective is to examine the impact of commoning practices on the relations between citizens in data-driven society. The paper places particular emphasis on urban scale digital twins, which are virtual replicas of cities that are used to simulate environments and develop scenarios in response to policy problems. It investigates the shift from technical to the socio-technical perspectives within the field of smart cities. The paper aims to shed light on the tension between the real and the ideal at stake during the process of abstracting sets of variables and processes in the case of urban scale digital twins. It analyses the critiques of ‘digital universalism’, reflecting upon the role of urban scale digital twins in decision-making concerning urban planning. Moreover, it explores how Manuel Castells’s theory could help us better understand the relationship between big data and urban planning and reshape the agendas of architectural education within the context of the New European Bauhaus. At the core of the paper are the interconnections between the ecological, economic, and cultural aspects of architectural and urban design and the ways in which these interconnections can be addressed in architectural education.

Alexandra Paio and Inês Nascimento

The paradigms of the past are being questioned. We now have a desire for rebirth, we aspire for a new vision of the world, and the time has come for the architect to equip himself with his most valuable and unique qualities – the ability to provide a vision of a new world and to convey hope. Today, the proximity between the architect and society is remembered and the academy has been called to participate in this innovative process.

However, the institutions and the profession are in crisis, teaching is outdated and the reflection for its repositioning refers to the urgency of a paradigm shift. The unexpected (re)emergence of counterculture experimental teaching practices in Portugal, outside the academy, raises doubt that architectural education may not be fulfilling its mission.

The potential of radical and utopian imagination was recently defended as a response to the current global SDGs challenges in the European context. In the 1960s and 1970s, the approximation of the two concepts to architectural education gave rise to pedagogical experiences that marked the last real innovation in this panorama. This type of approach and the importance of its return has found resonance in recent theories, seeding future pedagogical ecologies at a time when the future of pedagogical radicalism faces new challenges.

In this context, and because it’s fundamental to recognize the power of this mechanisms, a provocative dialogue between them emerges, warning us to the need for its rooting in the training and practice of the Portuguese architect. Therefore, this paper will present a critical reflection through a literature review and original interviews, in order to describe a paradigm shift in architectural education in Portugal and a new perspective at radical and utopian concepts, alerting to their urgent (re)approximation by the understanding and validation of their potential.

Danica Sretenović and Gaja Mežnarič Osole

Krater (ENG. crater) is an ecosystem, a production laboratory, and a practice of composting anthropocentric perceptions of what it means to work and learn while cultivating ground for difficult questions. Krater community sprouted from the neglected, crater-like construction site near the city center of Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 2020. Krater’s urban grounds interconnect more than 200 species and represent an irreplaceable ecological corridor between the city’s eastern and western forests. Despite its intrinsic value, this highly biodiverse 18,000 m2 plot will be entirely excavated and built over with the Palace of Justice by 2026. Within the tendering framework of a national architectural competition, the site was understood as a tabula rasa, which raised the key questions: What makes regenerative, nature-led design processes invisible to the planning administration? Is there enough room in this notion of (spatial) justice to include the rights of the non-humans that indisputably co-constitute our living environments? In order to address these multi-layered issues, The Feral Palace educational program introduces a tool of intervention within the unjust spatial planning policies, with alternative methods, protocols, and inventions instead of the scenario of ecosystem extinction. During the course of two months, the program produced a vibrant learning environment and a shared archive of public talks and guided discussions around emerging design proposals, set up to support ecologists, lawyers, designers, architects, and landscape architects coming from nine countries. The initiative brings forth otherwise non-existent imaginaries of multispecies-sensitive futures of the rewilded site and sparks a trans-disciplinary debate around topics such as the rights of self-sustained urban nature, urban soil archives, strategies of preservation by evacuation of ecosystems, plant-inclusive cybernetics, multispecies urbanism, modes of its representation and public presence. The program is realized in collaboration with Klaas Kuitenbrower (Zoop), Debra Solomon (multispecies urbanism), and Rok Kranjc (governing more-than-human transformations)

Michelle Pannone and Rebecca Dolgas

Emerging technologies and digital fabrication have revolutionized architectural education and practice, transforming the methods and tools of making in the design process that progress an idea from creative artistic vision into the fabricated built environment. Contemporary architectural education, pedagogically rooted in Bauhaus principles, must therefore utilize the advantages of these modes of making, fundamentally aligning teaching methodologies to the technologies that forge this process. As stated by Gropius (1919), “The Bauhaus believes the machine to be our modern medium of design and seeks to come to terms with it.” Today, more than a century later, the intersection of art and design remains essential to making.

With technological advancements in the profession, it therefore has become imperative for academia to direct focus towards digital craft. Digital fabrication has enabled the pursuit of limitless making through more comprehensive and efficient tools, equipping the designer to fabricate any creative idea, rather than limiting design potential by the ability to fabricate an idea. Gropius (1919) elaborates on the need for a greater connection between the drawing board and the construction process, stating that “The ultimate goal of all visual artistic activity is construction!… Let us establish a new guild of craftsmen without the presumption of class distinctions building a wall of arrogance between craftsmen and artists.” To better position students to see design through the lens of construction and with the contemporary digital tools that define making in the modern field of design, this paper examines a case study community design build program, and the transformative role of linking the profession and academia through making at full-scale. In connecting the principles of the Bauhaus to the technological tools and processes of digital fabrication, while investigating the interplay between various materials and assembly, design build represents a teaching methodology pertinent to contemporary design education.

Sandra Rihs

The research project looks at how to integrate indicators for sustainable development into a building information model. The idea is to combine the fields of sustainability, digital construction, and renovation.

The case study for the ongoing research is the listed building ‚white-hall’ which is part of a factory site and is going to be transformed into the faculty of architecture of the HEIA-FR.

The data requisitioned from the existing building is used to create a digital twin. It will undergo several iterations in order to arrive at an optimal version for reuse and simulation of possible designs. With the aim of carrying out a precise analysis of the state of the building, its structure, its components and its materials in order to optimise the choices for a renovation that takes into account the values of sustainable development.

To create a reliable and accurate decision model we use various tools such as LIDAR, drone, photogrammetry combined with conventional data such as plans, documentation and knowledge of renovation and history specialists as well as formal information from occupants.
In order to build a model that can be evolving and participative for future users and visitors to come.

The BIM-Ren research aims to provide an innovative approach to the integration of a precise, reliable and applicable methodology for buildings with heritage value.

Ian Garcia, Mehmet Ozdemir, Silvia Van Aken, Kristof Overdulve and Jouke Verlinden

Shaping the ideal scan-to-BIM (Building Information Modeling) workflow has been an ongoing goal in the Architecture, Engineering, Construction and Facility Management (AEC/FM) domains. This innovative workflow autonomously processes raw data to usable 3D models for virtual environments that can be directly utilized. In this case study, several reconstruction techniques were explored such as a high-end laser scanner as well as a relatively low-cost LiDAR integrated Tablet. Both hardware solutions also differ in portability, proving advantages and disadvantages depending on the scan environment.

For reconstruction we chose a renovated building, part of the University of Antwerp city campus. This location consists of reference spaces such as offices, classrooms, multifunctional rooms, auditoria, hallways, and stairs. Depending on the incoming light, visual noise, and usage in the final integration, different settings need consideration. Scanning larger workspace areas brings different attention points that are best considered beforehand. These include time of day, reflective surfaces, and visual noise (intensely crowded areas with many and or complex objects).

Processing scans brings several challenges. During the scanning process it is important to maintain overview. Not only check the scans on their quality after each individual scan but evaluate the physical surroundings and making sure they change as minimal as possible.

Finally, the transfer to VR integration is highly dependent on the processing work and the flexibility of the data export configuration. Dependencies are textures, file size, reduction capabilities and plug-in compatibility.

As a result, this case study is the base for constructing a workflow method for the industry on similar architecture as guidance for 3D scanning and showcasing best practices, these are taken from several logged workflows within this case study.

Bilge İmamoğlu

This paper will discuss the social role of the architectural education in the continuous reproduction of, not only the disciplinary knowledge, but also the ethos associated with the practices through which an individual utilizes their disciplinary training in placing their social standing. It will be argued that the need to re-evaluate the means and ends regarding the communication between the disciplinary knowledge and professional roles is especially compelling in the field of architecture, with the new agenda that the 21st century has introduced.

In this frame, the significant historic contribution of the Bauhaus in the early 20th century will be referred as not being confined in the content of the knowledge on design and architecture, but particularly in the critical form that this school had reformulated the triad of relationships taking place between the discipline, the professional and the society at large, opposing the professionalist norms which were in the process of being established in its time. Referring to the literature of sociology of professions as well as the Foucauldian concept of “discipline” and Bourdieu’s concept of “field”, it will be discussed that, just like social space itself, such relationships are also cohesive social products and are subject to constant change. It will be argued that Bauhaus experience still provides insightful lessons on how reforming the knowledge content in a discipline may be translated into sustainable results on the professional’s social role and function specifically if such reforms is coupled with reforms on practices of introducing the renewed knowledge content to the student of the field.

In this frame, the paper will also present certain educational experiments that we designed and practiced in our school of Architecture in Ankara, Turkey, which aims at introducing the aforementioned re-evaluation to the learning experiences of architectural students particularly in their introductory semesters.

Paul Francis Feeney

I was trained in the offices of Rem Koolhaas and Herzog & de Meuron between 2010-2019. I was exposed to ideas, processes, methods and attitudes. Architecture, in its expanded field, was constituted through masterplans, buildings, installations, strategies, research and the day to day grind of production.

At a certain point, having devoted the best part of a decade to these two practices, I had given all I could and taken all I wanted. I left and entered academia.

If selected, my contribution to this symposium will explore ‘transfers between professional practice and teaching’. I feel I can shine some light on this issue and the complexities it unravels. Most recently, I have confronted the following questions – what does one transfer from the professional world and what does one leave behind? What was truly useful in practice and relevant to the new age we are embarking upon?

I have a memory and an experience of practice that (probably) still resonates in the way I think and practice architecture today. Consciously or unconsciously, my practice is suspended between two modes of thinking. These are best summarised by the following quotes:

‘Architecture is the art of facts. We shouldn’t have a moralistic standpoint’
Jacques Herzog

“I think one of the important evolutions is that we no longer feel compulsively the need to argue, or to justify things on a kind of rational level. We are much more willing to admit that certain things are completely instinctive and others are really intellectual.”
Rem Koolhaas

One wonders which approach is the most urgent for a new generation of up and coming architects. Furthermore, one wonders if such approaches should be rejected altogether. This is what I’d like to develop with you at the next annual conference.

Dag Boutsen, Hanne Van Reusel and Michela Barosio

The NEB recognizes the innovative potential of architecture in relation to our society’s need, digging into questions on the position of the discipline of architecture, its practice and its education. Questions that have been looked into within the Erasmus+ “Architecture’s Afterlife” research project. The study investigating the diverse trajectories of architecture alumni, clearly showed that the competencies acquired in architectural education set up a professional modus operandi and identity that can take many forms.

One of the three inseparable NEB values, is about encouraging a dialogue across cultures, disciplines and genders. The search for the opening of new critical avenues promoting continuous improvement when rescuing ideas of critical production and the ability to think through design is rightly emphasized. This might be exactly what the Architecture’s Afterlife study has been able to highlight; the architect’s skill to look beyond, to find balance on the thin line between idealism and pragmatism, to maintain an overview while breaking down complexity into feasible components.

Yet, another conclusion of the study emphasis how this ‘architectural mindset’ expands far beyond the limited field of architecture and construction. It can be found in the architect who became a mayor, a lightening designer, a landscape photographer… and in the ones who sticked to architecture ‘pur sang’.

Looking at the NEB Festival in June 2022, the products, concepts and services at display showcase an architecture as we have known it, and art reflecting on societal visions and on recurring buzz concepts of ‘art & science’. Where are those often left invisible ‘beyond architects’ that expand and broaden the discipline?

With this article we aim to reveal and highlight the manifold personas of the architect, in order to push for a more contemporary architectural thought and practice and to expand the boundaries of what architecture can be and do.

Pedro Leão Neto

This abstract is based on the didactic experience and refinement of three curricular units (CUs) in FAUP, which are Photography and Design Communication, articulated with Photography of Architecture, City and Territory. In addition to this, the consolidation of a research work on the uses of diverse visual strategies and representation methods for communicating architecture, city and territory, with a special focus on photography as a transversal media within these areas of study.

The text describes a collaborative and dynamic environment allowing for an informed appraisal of architecture and city space, understanding the diverse forms of its appropriation and giving the students the possibility to participate in the discussion of the transformation of these territories.

The teaching process adopted encourages the interaction between teachers, researchers and students, leading to a dynamic of discovery built collectively, establishing relationships and connections between the people and institutions of academia involved and the general public. All this favours a dialogical learning process, exploring the multifaceted richness of the territories under study and the way in which public spaces are transformed and architecture is designed.

It will be shown the significant connection that is established between the CUs and the research focused on Architecture, Art and Image (AAI) which is the nuclear universe of all the research developed in the AAI research group, where several of the pedagogical actions of the CUS are linked to.

It is believed that this articulation between CUs and research coming from R&D project teams reinforces and provides conditions to stimulate the beginning of activities related with investigation, as well as the development of students’ critical reflexive competences, creativity and autonomy. Moreover, we also ensure that the articulated work of the CUs with research is open to various national and international teaching and research institutions, as well as to civil society.

Damir Mance and Dubravko Bacic

Many students describe the work process at the university as chaotic. There are many courses with different topics and many students with interests known or unknown to their peers and professors. All-nighters are still much more than an exception, and often such practices continue even after graduation during work in the office.

In the architectural profession, time planning stands out as one of the project planning processes that has a significant impact on the financial outcome of the project. The course intends to acquaint students with PM processes through application and development of awareness of their impact on scheduling and time management. By applying the PM process, the student initiates, plans, executes, controls, supervises, closes his work in the final semester of studies, and submits a seminar paper as a self-assessment of the execution process. PM processes are quantified and evaluated through a self-assessment: scope, schedule/time, cost, quality, resources, communication, and risks.

Students’ reactions to the assignment are not always positive, but for the most part, students express regret for not learning the PM processes early enough in their education. An occurring myth often appears in students’ conclusions that a rigid planning affects creative freedom because it limits the time needed to process and reflect on an idea/concept.

With thorough planning and execution of the plan, it is possible to improve efficiency and speed up the decision-making process without affecting quality. Decision-making is a disadvantage during students’ work due to the lack of experience, resulting in uncertainty and indecisiveness that consume time. The introduction of PM courses in the earlier years of study and the application of the PM process can positively affect the quality of studies, students’ satisfaction, and the adoption of productive habits as a positive contribution to the progress and improvement of students’ efficiency in later work.

Gabriel Hernández

The creation of the New European Bauhaus indicates how crucial architects and designers are to take meaningful action in an era marked by the SDGs. Architectural archives provide an excellent field to learn from particular interpretations on how to relate to the built environment.

Despite its potential as a valuable tool for research, archives are often disregarded in architectural education, vacating their understanding and interpretation to art and architecture historians. But, what is the role of architectural archives in the contemporary teaching of architecture? What can younger generations learn from the lessons from the past? Can archives be not only a tool for research but also a tool for practitioners?

This contribution aims to share the experience of bringing together relevant institutions through an architecture educational program, enhancing a multi-directional knowledge transfer in the same spirit of the New European Bauhaus agenda. On one side, professors and students of the Architectural Analysis subject at the ETSAM, the Architecture School of Madrid; and on the other, the Norman Foster Foundation (NFF) Archive, also in Madrid. The Foundation’s Archive hosts Norman Foster’s impressive collection of drawings, plans and models, showing an early understanding of sustainability as an essential tool of architectural thinking and practice.

During the Spring 2022 semester, prof. Madera and prof. Hernández teamed up with the NFF’s archivists to promote amongst their ETSAM students the use of archival sources to enrich the understanding of the crucial role of the architect in the built environment, using Foster’s work as a basis for a series of reflections systematised in an academic methodological approach. The students shared their architectural analysis with Foster, which started a fruitful conversation that will continue through an upcoming publication and exhibition in the Fall, enlarging the discussion with a broader audience.

Claus Peder Pedersen

The abstract discusses the development of a video-based scenario-driven online PhD supervisor training for the field of artistic research. The resource is developed as part of a transdisciplinary European Erasmus+ project that tackles artistic research within a broad range of disciplines, from performative and visual art to design and architecture.

The architectural and artistic research fields are still young and unevenly developed. They include a wide range of approaches, from practice-based research exploring established peer-recognised creative practices to topic-based research projects, where recent graduates aim to build their careers by developing knowledge aimed at academia or artistic practice. Research in the field has to build on continuously developing epistemologies across a wide range of research methodologies. It has to direct spatial, material and technical settings while navigating (often unstated) academic conventions. Supervision needs to support fellows through these conditions but also touches on a wide range of human interactions and relationships, unfolds in complex power relations, and involves emotions.

The presentation will explore and analyse this complex field to identify critical challenges for doctoral supervision. It will discuss how this guided the training resource’s development by probing different topics and learning formats. It will demonstrate the selected scenario-based method loosely adapted from the ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’ tradition developed by Brazilian director Augusto Boal in the 1950s and 1960s. The presentation explores multidisciplinarity within the artistic fields and the transfer between professional/artistic practice and research. It aims to contribute to the second topic of the conference: ‘The new European Bauhaus and Multidisciplinary Design’.

Ana Souto

Inspired by the study of the Bauhaus, The Architectural Association and the Glasgow School of Art, seventeen students in their final year of Architecture at Nottingham Trent University, designed their final projects with sustainability as a core foundation. This Atelier – “The New Bauhaus? Re-thinking Architecture: Sustainability is sexy” – was divided into two groups to develop the research behind their design projects. The first group revolved around ideas of building sustainably; the second one, which I led, embraced sustainability as building and supporting resilient communities, highlighting approaches that promoted sense of community and belonging, creativity, communities and connectivity.

This work was further explored thanks to a summer Student-Staff collaboration funded project, whereby a final year student of Architecture reviewed module guides, the submissions to the degree show (comparing 2021 and 2022), our current learning spaces, as well as gathered feedback from current students. Their findings and recommendations include highlighting the importance of well-being in design studio and tech modules, in line with the UN SDGs; in particular 3: Good health and well-being, and 11: Resilient cities and communities; physical changes to the learning spaces and across the University. These changes, influenced by the concept of a New Bauhaus, will be implement next Academic year, when we will create a new “well-being” award for final year students.

Our aim is to promote a better standard of well-being and sustainability which encompasses the ideals behind the New Bauhaus, which will help our students imagine the new Bauhaus, as well as contribute to the update of existing ones, both as buildings and learning environments.

Iryna Matsevko and Daria Ozhyhanova

The materiality of architecture, however, forms an intangible heritage that becomes an integral part of the tangible heritage. The destruction of Ukrainian cities due to war raises the question of the destruction of collective memory, which in turn encourages reflection on heritage and memory in general.

Considering physical destruction along with the destruction of paradigms caused by war and anticipating the upcoming post-war restoration of Ukrainian cities, a necessity for the rethinking of approaches and focuses in architectural education comes to light. A discussion on the contradictory topic of the multiplicity of the Ukrainian intangible heritage and architecture as one of its forming aspects should take its place in educational programs.

Kharkiv School of Architecture applies critical approaches to its curriculum, reflecting on the war conext and raising questions on how to communicate undesirable heritage. Can the recent past be considered heritage? What is behind de-communisation? Could soviet objects without artistic value be heritage?

The cross-course “Kharkiv Atlas” introduces these questions, engaging students in comprehending the (dis)continuity of the (in)tangible values of the building in the constantly evolving urban environment. The course is organized into three components: research into the social and cultural contexts of the site formalized as an historical passport of the object; research into the nature of the construction, its tectonics and changes caused by time, political, and technological transformations and drawing an axonometric section of the building to show its overlapping transformations.

Garry Miley

It seems possible that in recent times the concept of the architectural aesthetic has come to be treated with a certain amount of distrust. There is, I think, a perception that the term ‘aesthetic’ has become shorthand for the implication that when an architectural language – it doesn’t matter which language – is evident in a work it only serves to remind us that in the world of spatial arrangement there are those who get to determine the aesthetic and those for whom aesthetics are determined. This leads to an interesting question: is there a way to use these new ethical imperatives (inclusivity, durability, etc.) to arrive at a genuinely new architectural aesthetic? It might seem unlikely but if we examine the example of the Bauhaus the argument can be made that the possibility does indeed exist.

Rachel Armstrong and Rolf Hughes

We introduce the BioDigital platform as the third Digital Turn, enabled by the incorporation of “BioElectrical Systems” (BES) into urban contexts (PHOENIX, 2022). Using metabolically generated electricity produced by microbial biofilms, BES are accessible by directly visualizing their electrical transactions on a screen (the BioDigital interface) and are characterized by three pedagogical and technological principles: i) (up to 12V) power generation, ii) (microbial) information and iii) biochemical transformation. Integrating life-flows between microbes (comprising the metabolic base of the biosphere), big (environmental) data governed by AI, electrochemistry and human inhabitation, this transactional platform is fundamentally environmental turning organic waste into electricity, cleaned water, bioremediation services, bodily monitoring, and biosynthesis. Introducing a new degree of “smart” resource circularity within architectural systems the BioDigital platform operates within the carrying capacity of any given site (Armstrong et al., 2017). For example, pioneering installations by Organica Inc., and Pee Power® have been scaled to meet community needs to treat the collected wastes of between 5,000 to 30,000 people (Armstrong, 2022). Near future applications of the BioDigital include the laboratory prototype Living Architecture, which converts greywater/urine into bioelectricity, biomass and cleaned water; 999 years 13sqm (the future belongs to ghosts) a posthuman household gallery installation powered by microbes; and Active Living Infrastructure: Controlled Environment (ALICE), a prototype microbial/human biodigital interface powered by a microbial cyborg. As pedagogical systems, the BioDigital helps the architectural imagination envisage and implement new 12V interfaces for its infrastructures starting within the home. Establishing limits to consumption and generating domestic resource from waste, innovation is promoted in new kinds of housework, inviting new protocols for inhabiting space, establishing new environmental rituals, making possible new types of living spaces and through social systems, activating a range of commons from which new microeconomies can arise (Hughes and Armstrong, 2021).

Mia Roth-Čerina

The issues raised within the New European Bauhaus directly point to the question of the collective, both as a spatial as well as a social notion. In its physical manifestation, the spatial imprint of collectivity has a direct relation to the cultural and climactic context. While many implications of answering these issues can be shared regardless of geographical position, when talking about the physical framing of collectivity we can find common denominators among countries in southern Europe, in their traditions, way of life, relationship to open space, but also challenges facing urban expansion, heat islands, pollution, contemporary and active approaches to heritage etc. The proposal investigates spatial conditions triggering appropriation by communities in both historic and contemporary South-European environments – the historic patterns of public and communal spaces; the specific conditions of warm climates making the interstitial space of the city a stage for public life; the green infrastructures mitigating consequences of climate change and making open spaces more livable; active reuse going beyond reprogramming to establish new identities. Through case studies, vernacular and designed spatial interventions are viewed as social acts, addressing inclusivity, and extending the notion of sustainability toward one that is societal, cultural, more-than-human, bringing us into a shared productive ecology. Finally, the role of the architect as well as the content of an architectural upbringing is challenged, posing the issue of design as a collective, inclusive endeavor.

Martin Luce, Mieke Pfarr-Harfst, Judith Reeh, Jörg Schröder and Oliver Tessmann

The architectural disciplines are called for a strong and inspiring position in current challenges of European societies. In public and political debates, their role for the ecological reconfiguring of the whole building sector, for the transition of cities to climate-neutrality and resilience, but also for social inclusion, accessibility, and affordability is increasingly acclaimed. And, in particular by the initiative New European Bauhaus, the holistic approach of architecture is seen as an asset, not at least for a cultural and behavioural change to sustainability that stresses the value of everyday living spaces and new aesthetics. Obviously, research in architecture will be essential in the coming years, and its interaction with other disciplines and society. The authors of this contribution are currently launching an initiative of the German TU9 architecture faculties to establish together discipline-specific concepts and standards for research evaluation. Starting from a research project on the German and European context in this regard, this contribution aims to define consequences of an enhanced research orientation in architecture, via three steps: First, we outline a working definition of design research in architecture as fundamental research, since design is at the core of architectural thinking and work. Problem-oriented methodologies are in the foreground of discussions, cognition-oriented and practice-based works lead to new definitions of open and evolving research processes. Second, the contribution explores pathways to position design research in architecture as fundamental research. This concerns academia as well as society, funding programmes and research assessment schemes. It regards discussions about transferability, feedback to theories, and communicating methods and results: in a discipline-specific range of research outputs, such as exhibitions, performances, material/digital artefacts, designs, and publication practices. Third, the contribution highlights the demand for a new research-orientation in innovating practice and education, and asks about linkages with positioning research in architecture.

Paula Cristina Barros, Ana Patrícia Duarte and Margarida Perestrelo

The aim of this paper is to discuss how mutualist associations (MA) in Portugal can contribute for the sustainability of communities and territories, namely in terms of health, well-being and welfare of the communities and territories resilience, in alignment with sustainable development goals number 3, 11 and 17 from a multi and transdisciplinarity.

Based on the literature review, analysis of secondary data regarding national ma, and the case study of two (MA), this paper argues that these organizations constitute key players in the promotion of territories sustainability and communities’ well-being and welfare, acting in collaboration with other agents in the territories. MA are private organizations with a public utility, operating in the sphere of social and solidarity economy. They are created with the aim of addressing a common situation, risk or vulnerability faced by a particular group and offering complementary responses to the services provided by the government and the private sector to address these issues. These complementary responses can be essential to help communities gain access to primary services at a fairer price and responsibility is shared by all members, with democracy.

The recognition of the relevant contribution of this type of organizations to the well-being and development of territories and communities can help encouraging the creation of other similar organizations, whose activities will contribute to the sustainable development of communities and territories. Barros (2019) has developed a conceptual model on the understanding the role of human beings on the planet, that is being studied in the doctoral thesis of which this paper is part. It is intended to understand how the conceptual model can be applied in the territory, integrating multiple and transdisciplinary studies, in particular studying the contribution of ma in Portugal and analyze if and how it can provide an answer to a New Europeans Bauhaus.

Mert Zafer Kara and Sevgi Türkkan

ime is one of the lesser-addressed elements of the hidden curriculum, which fundamentally shapes architectural pedagogy not only in its temporal organization but also in the values, character, culture, motives, and even the architect figure it informs. The notion of time has culturally been assigned meanings and roles; a framework, a limitation, evaluation criteria, a commodity, a source, a route to follow, etc. Paradigm shifts such as the transition to a formal, universitarian system, the commodification of time as a marketing tool, or the reorganization of time-space through online education have raised the need to re-evaluate the often-invisible temporal practices of architectural education from a historical perspective.

This paper considers the notion of time as a crucial structuring element of architectural education and aims to discuss its embedded qualities through a collective reading of influential architectural learning models: from pre-institutional to 21st-century examples by way of comparative diagrammatic visualizations.

In this context, curriculums, as transmitters of the scope, content and values of educational models, as well as mechanisms that materialize their immaterial structure, reveal themselves as mediums, which can be used to reflect relationally and critically on the changing pedagogical understandings on the use of time for architectural education. Selected examples, including pre-institutional traditions, resorting to the classification from Four Historical Definitions of Architecture (Parcell, 2007), 19th and 20th-century models of Beaux-Arts and Bauhaus, and some well-known 21st-century institutions will be revealed through the diagrammatized mechanisms of their temporal organizations. The study aims to critically review some time-bound pedagogical motives, routines, and conventions throughout history beyond a measurable, objectified understanding. Essentially, it is esteemed to reflect on the educational experiences and outcomes of current and future practices, as time is becoming an even scarcer commodity and a more critical tool.