Newsletter November 2019

Ecological transition implies and demands a conceptual mutation, a paradigm shift.
This global transistion has to integrate also other systems of knowledge and ways of conceiving the world, some of which are still organizing the daily lives of the inhabitants of cities in the Global South, and are often shunned and disregarded in the Global North.

Labs & Fests @ Glocal, 2023~2026

The notion of a circular city has taken to occupy center stage as a main concept for sustainable zero-waste urban futures. And yet, as one takes a closer look, the circle expands in multiple ripples and loops, revealing the sheer complexity that envisioning – let alone developing – circular cities entail.

Presentation & Workshop Cities in the Loop: Re-coding the Circular City @ Hybrid Space Lab, Berlin, 1 July 2022
Presentation & Workshop zirkularKIEZ @ Bits & Bäume 2022 Conference for Digitization and Sustainability, Technical University Berlin, 2 October 2022

Convers(at)ions engages creatively with exchanges over border phenomenology and performativity, it transforms negative spaces such as military demarcations and borders by adopting a ‘more-than-human’ perspective and taps into the potential of nature and environmental conservation activities.

Research @ Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) &  European Green Belt (EGB), Berlin & Seoul, October 2019~2023

ReWild Autobahn proposes a hybrid (natural and artificial) landscape on a dismantled urban highway in Berlin as a green corridor for humans and non-humans.

Exhibition ReWild Autobahn @ BDA Gallery, Association of German Architects Berlin, Berlin, 6 October – 26 November 2021
Publication Berlin Atlas @ BauNetz, Berlin, 19 November 2021

For the German Federal Cultural Foundation Hybrid Space Lab developed Co-Creating Hybrid Culture that addresses the augmenting of physical cultural sites and practices through digital spaces via transdisciplinary co-creating events.

Keynote Future Cultural Space @ Kulturstiftung des Bundes, HoloLab – dive in Program for Digital Interaction, Halle an der Saale, Germany, 16.00 – 17.00, 22 September 2021
Research & Concept @ German Federal Cultural Foundation, Halle an der Saale, Germany, 2021

Grow Your Green City is an international campaign creating awareness of the fundamental role played by urban green. Grow Your Green City is committed to the idea that a Smart City should be a climate-conscious city, exploring how digital and media technologies can contribute to address urban climate adaptation and water-conscious urban development, strengthening and promoting sustainability cultures.

Workshop Grow Your Green City @ Floriade Expo 2022, Almere, The Netherlands, 25 February 2021

In the Anthropocene, the juxtaposition between nature versus artifact and designed environment is becoming obsolete. In the dissolution of this polarity lays a great chance: architecture (which in the allegorical depiction of the Vitruvian Primitive Hut by Marc-Antoine Laugier and Charles Eisen of 1753 had emerged from nature) merges with nature once again.

Architecture G AI A @ de Waag Technology & Society, Amsterdam, 2019-2020

Water is the necessary resource for life. Human settlements have always been dependent upon access to clean water and its relative scarcity – freshwater makes up only 2.5% of water available on the earth – has awarded it the name ‘blue gold’. If world population increases as expected, hitting the 9 billions threshold by 2050, will water resources be sufficient?

Embassy Lab Water Conscious Fashion, @ Neonyt, Kraftwerk Berlin, 16 January 2019

Recent developments such as Internet of Things, Big Data, and Machine Intelligence have ambition and the potential to algorithmically manage life, including urban nature. These developments in technology and media are supporting the development of a new hybrid architecture where Architecture and Nature fuse: NatureTecture!

Article NatureTecture © Hybrid Space Lab, Berlin, 20 March 2018

GRÜNMANIA decorates the front of the pavilion, transcoding the GERMANIA letter characters. These small “shifts” bring about a transformation and inversion of meaning and open up a wide range of ideas: the pavilion is no longer just Germany’s shop window, but a container in which the global challenges can be tackled together.

Concept German Pavilion @ Venice Architecture Biennial 2018, Italy, 1 May 2017

Recent developments such as Internet of Things, Big Data and Machine Intelligence will algorithmically organize life, including urban nature. These developments in technology and media are supporting the development of a new hybrid architecture where architecture and nature fuse.

Lecture NatureTecture @ V2 Institute for Unstable Media, Rotterdam, 9 April 2017

Our current geological age is being described as “anthropocene”, as the epoch during which human activity is the dominant influence on climate and the environment.
But we do not need to consider a “longue durée” historical approach, giving priority to long-term historical structures over events.
Todays’ world is witnessing an unforeseen acceleration of environmental changes with a growing human influence on biodiversity and ecosystems with species extinction and climate change.

Exhibition NatureTecture @ Beijing Media Art Biennale, China Millennium Monument, Beijing, 24 September – 30 October 2016
Lecture & Workshop NatureTecture @ Beijing Design Week 2016,  Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, 30 September 2016

Transforming the facade of the Humboldt Forum into a living organism.
The newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, which appears during the 9th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, publishes in Der Tagespiegel Kunst 2016 magazine an interview with Hybrid Space Lab.
The interview on the projects Humboldt Volcano and Humboldt Jungle addresses the changing role of design in times of crisis.

Interview Expanding the Design Zone, Der Tagesspiegel Kunst 2016, Bettina Homann @ Der Tagesspiegel, Berlin, 20 September 2016

A vertical jungle in a greenhouse pavilion clings to the Berlin Humboldt Forum. A trail leads from the underground to the roof of the Humboldt Forum, opening up stacked gardens and pop-up restaurants dedicated respectively to world flora and world cuisines.

Circular Economy encompasses technical as well as biological cycles and has as a goal to keep materials and products at their highest utility and value during the whole up-cycling process.

Research Embassy Lab Circular Economy @ Kingdom of The Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Hague, 18 March 2016

At the edges of the cities: landscape development strategies.

Publication Foundation of the Brandenburg Technical University Cottbus @ Brandenburg Technical University Cottbus-Senftenberg, Chair of Landscape Architecture and Planning, ISBN 978-3-940471-24-6, IKMZ University Library, Cottbus, Germany, 13 March 2016

Poly Garden City is a participative project integrating green into Athens built environment, fusing building and gardens into new hybrid urban typologies, and reinterpreting modernist urban heritage and a strategy for participative climate adaptation for cities in semi-arid climates.

Research & Urban Design @ City of Athens, 5 April 2015

Rethinking design in order to address the changes of our future needs in our increasingly service and knowledge based society and economy.
TRUST2design develops a process-oriented design approach taking into account a multiplicity of cycles such as energy cycles (energy needed for production and transportation, objects as energy converters), the multiple-shift usage but also lifecycles, recycling, etc..

Research @ Dutch Design Foundation, Premsela Stichting, Amsterdam, 15 June 2015

A workshop focusing on the revitalization of the generic Greek modern apartment buildings “polykatoikies” was organized by the Athens Municipality and curated by Hybrid Space Lab within the framework of the Co-Creating Athens project.
The workshop was opened by Athens Mayor Yiorgos Kaminis and the Dutch Ambassador Jan Versteeg.

Lectures & Workshop Rebooting Athens @ Co-Creating the City, City of Athens, 14 December 2014

Co-Creating Athens is a field trip for international city-makers to visit and exchange with Athens urban initiatives.

Lectures & Workshop Incubator City @ City of Athens, 13 December 2014
Lectures & Workshop Workshop Co-Creating the City @ City of Athens & Pakhuis de Zwijger, Athens, 10-13 December 2014

In the Sisyphus work of the day-to-day struggle for survival of the offices, in the traineeship of the next generation, the crisis of architecture is now directly experienced. Even in the architectural discourse there is a perplexity. Excesses from the crisis are sought through escapades into atmospheres or through bonds from post-bicentenary courses, such as the communication for “architecture pop” or the urbanist in the shrinkage discussion.

Publication Landscape BOTOX @ Stadt+Grün, Germany, September 2006