Hybrid Biotope

Hybrid Biotope, a temporary co-working camp taking place at the Raketenstation Hombroich in spring 2019, explores the coming together and merging of nature and artefact and of artificial and organic life. The program focuses on developing speculative ideas for strengthening the Raketenstation Hombroich’s potential as a transdisciplinary intellectual-artistic laboratory, a Hybrid Biotope.

Research & Concept @ Rocket Station Hombroich, Germany, 1 April 2018

Hundred years ago, in 1919, a group of architects, artists, and designers came together to found the famous Bauhaus art school. With an interdisciplinary approach, Bauhaus tackled the challenges of its modernist times with the upcoming industrialized mass production.

In 2019 during the Bauhaus jubilee, a group of architects, artists, designers, and scientists will come together for a temporary co-working camp to address today’s upcoming challenges:

Climate change, the rapid loss of biodiversity, and accelerating ecological concerns urge us to rethink our relation to nature. Instead of juxtaposing nature to artifact and built environment we have to develop productive hybrid solutions merging nature with our designed man-made surroundings.

Technological revolution with ubiquitous digitalization, Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, and robotics together with developments such as genetics and post-humanism are urging us to rethink the relationship of artificial and organic life in general.

The merging of nature and artifact and of artificial and organic life are the core issues to be investigated at the temporary co-working camp “Hybrid Biotope” that takes place at the Raketenstation Hombroich in spring 2019. With its transdisciplinary format “Hybrid Biotope” tackles these challenges and explores the different aspects of combinations of nature, art/architecture/design and technology.

But it does this not merely theoretically. With a hands-on approach, the program develops a fertile and innovative ecosystem for experiments, addressing a concrete case study: The camps participants collaborate developing speculative ideas for the further development of the Raketenstation Hombroich into a “Hybrid Biotope”. This includes the programmatic, spatial and other aspects that would strengthen Hombroich Raketenstation’s potential as a transdisciplinary intellectual-artistic laboratory: a “Hybrid Biotope”.

The camps program includes several formats that involve public, from children and adolescents to the general public visiting Hombroich.

related PROJECTS