#Hybrid Space

Hybrid Space focuses on methodologies to explore and develop in an integrated way the fusions of media space and physical place, these hybrid ambivalent spaces that are at the same time analog and digital, virtual and material, local and global, tactile and abstract.

news

Inclusive Democratic Digital @ Digital City Alliance Berlin

Workshop of the Digital City Alliance Berlin on “COVID-19: Lessons learned for the Berlin Digitization Strategy” focusing on observations and experiences during the spring 2020 pandemic and drawing conclusions for a democratic and inclusive digitization policy for Berlin.

Workshop Kiez Lab @ Bündnis digitale Stadt Berlin, 6 May 2020

Bricks & Bits @ Lithuanian Radio

Interview by Rūta Leitanaitė on Lithuanian Radio on how the physical and the digital dimensions of the city interact, on how to develop cities in an integrated way, making the city more fair, comfortable, and attractive.

Interview City of Bricks and Bits, Rūta Leitanaitė @ Lithuanian Radio, “Need an Architect”, Lithuania, 2 April 2020

Hybrid Space @ National Gallery of Art Vilnius

The lecture describes the development of Hybrid Space Lab’s approach to urban and spatial phenomena, coining Hybrid Space as a new set of conceptual tools and a new qualitative space from the encounter of the physical and the digital.

Lecture
 Hybrid Space @ Architecture Fund, Lithuanian Council for Culture, 
National Gallery of Art 
Vilnius, Lithuania, 
5 March 2020

Experimental Space @ Weizenbaum Institute

What should spaces be like in which experiments with digital technologies are made, experienced and further developed? How can we provide access to and knowledge of digital technologies, and above all create ways to shape them, develop them further and experiment with them?

Open Lab @ Weizenbaum Institute, Berlin, 16 January 2020

Digital Strategy @ Digital City Alliance Berlin

More than thirty organisations and individuals from science and civil society sign the statement of the Digital City Alliance of Berlin. Berlin needs an inclusive digitization policy that focuses on people, nature and the common good. The development process of this strategy must be transparent and enable the active participation of civil society.

Declaration @ Bündnis digitale Stadt Berlin, 11 December 2019

Deep Space @ ARA Catalan Newspaper

The Valley of the Fallen without Franco: the fate of the other 33,847 dead”
This is the title of the article by journalist Sílvia Marimom Molas in the Catalan Newspaper ARA on the future of the Valle de los Caídos with an interview on Deep Space.

Article The Valley of the Fallen without Franco: the fate of the other 33,847 dead, Sílvia Marimom @ Catalan Newspaper ARA, Barcelona, 23 November 2019 

Surveillance Capitalism & Cognitive Architecture @Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society

Surveillance Capitalism is becoming an established notion with a number of meanings around the commodification of personal information and Berlin lecture the social psychologist Shoshana Zuboff on 6 November 2019, organised by our partner Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society

Lecture Surveillance Capitalism, Professor Shoshana Zuboff @ Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Berlin, 6 November 2019 

KiezLab @ Alliance Digital City Berlin

The challenges of digital transformation are becoming more and more tangible in the daily lives of Berliners. There is an increasing need to get involved and take the city’s digital future into its one’s own hands. From 2019 Berlin will develop a digital strategy in which goals for the digital future of the capital are to be formulated.

Workshop Kiez Lab @ Bündnis Digitale Stadt Berlin, Germany, 2019~2020

Deep Space @ Magazine for Architecture Marlowes

The Valley of the Fallen is a large memorial erected near Madrid in the mountain range of the Sierra de Guadarrama on the initiative of the dictator Francisco Franco. It is dedicated to the fallen of the Spanish Civil War. Within the scope of the project “Deep Space” it is proposed to transform the monument by digital means.

Publication From Monument to Memorial@ Magazine for Architecture and City Marlowes, Germany, 16 Juli 2019

City to Go @ Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society

Ubiquitous digitization is increasingly transforming urban life in all its aspects and Smart City technologies promise unlimited efficiency to urban mobility solutions. It is however worth reflecting on why digitally supported and automated negotiation concerning, amongst others, mobility does not necessarily equal objective and fair decision-making.

Presentations & Discussion City to Go @ Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, 15 July 2019, Berlin

Deep Space @ University Library Hamburg

Instead of creating a gap in this highly symbolic place, the international think tank Hybrid Space Lab represents the impetus to explore alternative memory narratives to the previously totalitarian narrative of the Valle de los Caídos.

Article Romanistik Blog @ State and University Library Hamburg Carl von Ossietzky, Hamburg, 8 July 2019

 

Exhumation Finissage @ Goethe Institut

On 24 September 2019 Spain’s Supreme Court approved unanimously the exhumation of the former dictator Franco from the underground basilica of Valle de los Caídos mausoleum. Hybrid Space Lab’s project “Deep Space: Re-signifying Valle de los Caídos” investigating what transformations are still needed at the Valle de los Caídos so as not to create a cenotaph – an empty burial monument – is becoming increasingly urgent.

Opening, Exhibition, Lecture, Discussion, Finissage & Public Space Exhibition on Facade: Lost Memory – Recovered Memory @ Goethe Institut, Madrid, 5 June 2019 until Franco’s Exhumation

GREENtopia @ Art Museum of China

At the Art Museum of China the exhibition space will be transformed into a creative laboratory, an interdisciplinary platform co-developed by international artists, creative thinkers, independent scholars, urban planners and stakeholders. It is a union, a mini co-op city inside a skyscraper.


Exhibition GreenTopia @ Art Museum of China, Greater Bay Area, Shenzhen, P.R. China, 15 March-15 April 2019

City Making in the Digital Age @ Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society

City Making in the Digital Age is the kick-off event of City Making Lab, a co-operation between Hybrid Space Lab and Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society.Keynote speaker Marleen Stikker, co-founder of Waag Society, an Amsterdam based interdisciplinary non-profit media lab and research institute that aims to put social values at the core of technology by creating and promoting open, fair and inclusive innovations.

Keynote by Marleen Stikker , co-founder of Waag Society @ City Making in the Digital Age,  Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Berlin, 21 February 2019

Deep Space @ Catalan Newspaper ARA

Catalan journalist Sílvia Marimon Molas describes in her article “The Gaze of European Experts” in the Catalan newspaper ARA on 31st October 2018 the workshop “Deep Space: Re-signifying Valle de los Caídos” participants’ visit to the site and the necessity of a change of the monument’s narrative.

Publication The Gaze of European Experts, Sílvia Marimon @ ARA Catalonia, Spain, 31 October 2018

Deep Space @ Valle de los Caídos

“Deep Space: re-signifying Valle de los Caídos” is a workshop at the Medialab Prado in Madrid from 25 till 27 October 2018 in Madrid. Hybrid Space Lab is  co-organizing an international conference and executing workshops with public interventions and pop-up exhibitions in Berlin at the transmediale and in Rotterdam at the New Institute in 2019.

Workshop”Deep Space: re-signifying Valle de los Caídos”, @ Medialab Prado in Madrid, 25-27 October 2018
Lecture, @ TRACES in Milan, January 2019
Lecture, @ transmediale in Berlin, February 2019
Films, Talks, Discussions, Installation, Event @ Goethe Institut Madrid 6 May 2019

Riga Readings @ Advanced Social and Political Research Institute

Hybrid Diplomacy: How to integrate digital and creative innovation in diplomatic processes.
AR/VRxIoT+AI+? = Hybrid Space
The combination of physical and media space, of local place and digital networks, is coined Hybrid Space. Space today is transformed by technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) or Mixed Reality, becoming increasingly hybrid.

Lecture The Transformation of Diplomacy: Digitalization and Innovation @ Advanced Social and Political Research Institute, Riga Readings in Social Sciences, University of Latvia, Riga, 22-23 November 2018

Mart Stam Talks @ MakeCity

Lucas Verweij will moderate presentations and a panel discussion with leading artists and architects from the Netherlands and Germany who work at the interface of architecture, theatre, and material & surface design in the public space and develop remarkable, often participatory concepts.
The Mart Stam Talks are organized by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Mart Stam Stiftung für Kunst + Gestaltung and the Weissensee Kunsthochschule Berlin.

Lectures & Panel Mart Stam Talks @ Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Berlin, 29 June 2018

Technology & The City @ BPD Magazine

BPD Magazine will publish in June 2018 a double interview with Prof. Frans Vogelaar, Partner at Hybrid Space Lab in Berlin and Prof. Dr. Elphi Nelissen, Dean of the Faculty of Architecture at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) on how digitization is changing mobility and the city. They explore the possibilities of digital technologies for citizens and cities and the design of future cities.

Double Interview with Prof. Dr. Elphi Nelissen & Prof. Frans Vogelaar @ BPD Magazine, The Netherlands, 1 June 2018

BioTecture @ Central Academy of Fine Arts Art Museum Beijing

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

Lectures & Discussions @ CAFA Art Museum, Central Academy of Fine Arts Art Museum (CAFA) & Beijing Visual Art Innovation Institute, no 8. Hua Jia Di Nan Jie, Chaoyang District, Beijing, P.R. China, 25-26 November 2017

BioTecture @ Communication University of China

BioTecture proposes how architecture will merge with green structures.
The accelerating developments in nature, bio-technology, technology and architecture are creating a new hybrid architecture.

Lecture BioTecture @ Communication University of China (CUC), Dingfuzhuang, Chaoyang District, Beijing, P.R. China, 24 November 2017

Avant Garden @ Festival of Intermedia Hong Kong

Humboldt Volcano is exhibited at the Crossing Border | Border Crossing, International Festival of Intermedia in Hong Kong. Humboldt Volcano, a hybrid building and vertical garden, is such an ‘inter-media’, as it opens up and enables the appropriation of the Berlin Humboldt Forum by an international multicultural public.

Exhibition International Festival of Intermedia @ Hong Kong Jockey Club, Hong Kong, 9-22 October 2017

Smart & the City @ Xi’an Art Museum

The exhibition Silk Road, Portal to World Imagination at the Xi’an Art Museum in China re-imagines the cities along the Silk Road. Smart & the City showcases the integration of Smart Technologies and the Urban, as tools for a sustainable New Smart Silk Road.

Exhibition The 4 Session of the Silk Road International Art Festival @ Xi’an Art Museum, Xi’an, Shaanxi, P.R. China, 16 September-3 October 2017

CLASH @ Xi’an Art Museum

CLASH refers to the clash of the encountering systems and functions as a social tool for bargaining, exchange and cross-fertilization.
CLASH is made out of elements that are to be transformed and expanded by visitors, tourists, artists, and inhabitants of Xi’an.
The futuristic and utopian installation CLASH embraces a social space and a shelter.

Exhibition CLASH @ Xi’an Art Museum, Xi’an, Shaanxi, P.R. China, 16 September-3 October 2017
Forum @ Xi’an Art Museum, Xi’an, Shaanxi, P.R. China, 10 September 2017

Soft Urbanism @ Xi’an Art Museum

Soft Urbanism, a vision of the urban in the digital age, based on a “Network Paradigm” approach to urbanism, reinvents the historic networks, connecting them to today’s hybrid, combined urban and media, networks, accelerating them into the future.

Exhibition The 4 Session of the Silk Road International Art Festival @ Xi’an Art Museum, Xi’an, Shaanxi, P.R. China, 16 September-3 October 2017

Hutopolis

The social and economical transformations which are happening in both Russia and China are parallel in many ways and both countries are experiencing the shift from a planned economy to new models of development.

Flexible Infrastructure @ TU Berlin

What are the social, economic, participatory, urban-architectural and technical concepts that Berlin as a Smart City really needs?
Smart City Berlin should address in an integrative way connected challenges such as urban growth and housing, migration and demographic change, mobility, use of resources and circularity, climate adaptation, citizen participation and digital networks.

Workshop Intelligent City Flexible Infrastructures for Smart City Development @ TU Berlin, HUMBOLDT-VIADRINA Governance Platform, Berlin, 21 November 2016

Hybrid Culture @ Kulturinvest Conference

How do digital networks transform cultural institutions?
Digitalization supports hybridization as a fusion of creative artistic practices (post-medium art) as well as of cultural creators and consumers (cultural co-creation).
Participatory social media open up cultural institutions and transform them into active players in the creation of communities.

Keynote @ Tagesspiegel, Kulturinvest Conference, Digital Strategies & Social Media, Berlin, 4 November 2016

Design Zone @ Der Tagesspiegel

The special art edition of the German newspaper DER TAGESSPIEGEL Kunst 2016, which appears during the 9th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, publishes an article by Bettina Homann, an interview on the projects Humboldt Volcano and Humboldt Jungle.

Publication Design Zone by Bettina Homann @ DER TAGESSPIEGEL Kunst 2016, Berlin, 2 September 2016

projects

festCITY

festCITY consists of a radical, situated approach to embed festival and cultural events into the city. It entails a process-oriented think-tank to sustainably integrate festivals and festival designing and making into the environment, with a crossover, hybrid approach that combines Berlin’s (bio)diversity leveraging unexpected encounters and combinations from the cultural and tech fields.

Lecture FESTcity, Town Hall Meeting #1 @ betahaus, Berlin, 22 March 2023

Next Stop Culture

Animal Club connects creatives, ecologists, biologists, artists, philosophers and other experts with professionals from the club scene to generate new concepts and develop new business models for a sustainable future of clubbing and culture.

Presentation, Workshop, Panel, Party @ Amsterdam Dance Event @ SEXYLAND World, Amsterdam, 16.00-24.00, 2022

Animal Club

Animal Club connects creatives, ecologists, biologists, artists, philosophers and other experts with professionals from the club scene to generate new concepts and develop new business models for a sustainable future of clubbing and culture.

Presentation, Workshop, Panel & Party Animal Club, Co-Hosted by VibeLab @ Amsterdam Dance Event, SEXYLAND World, 1 Noordwal, 1021 PX Amsterdam, 20 October 2022

circulariCITY

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

hybrid

The way people communicate and connect around the world today, is being radically redefined by digitalization.
With the acceleration of digitization as one of the most obvious consequences of the pandemic, the use of digital tools is experiencing an unprecedented rise among arts and cultural institutions and practices.

Publication @ tanz Yearbook 2022, Germany, 15 August 2022

INbetweenSTITUTE

The future of culture is hybrid. Cultural innovation lies in the cross-pollination between different fields, approaches and expertise.

Lectures, Presentations, Discussions & Cooking @ Hybrid Space Lab, Berlin, 2021~2023
Presentation & , Discussion Marleen Stikker, founder and director Waag Future Lab for Design and Technology @ Hybrid Space Lab, Berlin, 18.00-20.00, 30 November 2021
Presentation & Discussion Hybrid Face, Merlijn Schoonenboom, cultural historian and journalist @ Hybrid Space Lab, Berlin, 18.00-21.00, 19 May 2023
Cooking & Sound,  The Common Meal, FM Einheit, musician, sound researcher, actor, composer, producer and founding member Einstürzende Neubauten, LI Zhenhua, master chef, curator, poet, filmmaker and artist, Prof. Dr. Siegfried Zielinski, media archaeologist, writer and curator @ Hybrid Space Lab, Berlin, February 2023

Future Cultural Space

What are engaging, inclusive, and sustainable hybrid formats and spaces for art and culture?
For the German Federal Cultural Fund Hybrid Space Lab developed a workshop on the hybrid future of culture.

Hybrid Workshop “The Future is not Digital. Hybrid is the Future!” @ Kulturstiftung des Bundes, HoloLab – dive in Program for Digital Interaction, Halle an der Saale, Germany 14 October 2021

Hybrid Spaces

Investigating and speculating on the future of social and cultural spaces requires considering physical spaces in combination with digital media networks, emphasizing the hybrid qualities of spaces in the interplay of the digital and the physical.

Publication Hybrid Space @ @ Regeneration [and its Discontents], Lithuanian Architectural Foundation, Vilnius, Lithuania, 4 June 2021

Re-Charting Places

In our globalized world the accelerating speed of socio-political and cultural change collides with the longue-durée of heritage sites and territories. As social and political contexts around places with a public meaning change, controversies often arise.

Publication Re-Charting Places @ Contested Spaces – Concerted Projects: Designs for Vulnerable Memories, Lettera Ventidue Edizioni, Syracuse, Italy, April 2021

Club Futures

Club Futures is an international laboratory with the aim of developing new perspectives for the club and cultural scene.

Exchange, Ideation, Research, Panels, Parties, Prototyping, Workshops @ Club Futures, Hybrid Space Lab, Berlin & Amsterdam, 2022~2023

Hybrid Platforms

Hybrid Platforms develops con­cepts and ideas for new cultural formats and is organized and curated by the NRW KULTURsekretariat and Hybrid Space Lab.

Workshop Hybrid Platforms @ Next Level Festival for Games & NRW KULTURsekretariat, Kokskohlenbunker, Zeche Zollverein, Essen, Germany, 14 November 2020

Green Artificial Intelligent Architecture

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

Reboot Culture

Reboot Culture experiments with collective cultural experiences deeply rooted in urban space, combining public physical space and public digital space. Through hybrid formats and the support of a mobile, modular media infrastructure, the program engages with practices that can make culture ‘go-round’ in its hybridity, embedding cultural co-creation in the city fabric. With floating stage and studio facilities at the riversides Reboot Culture merges (urban) landscapes with Hybrid Staging, developing a strong symbolic momentum for the rebooting of culture.

Concerts, Jam-sessions, Performances, Screenings & Narrow- and Broadcasts @ Instrument Inventors, Royal Academy of Art & Royal Conservatoire the Hague, Sonic Acts, V2 Lab for Unstable Media, Waag technology & society, The Netherlands, 2020-2021

(Re)Venue

As museums and cultural institutions face the prospect of a 1.5mt-apart life and economy, how to offer meaningful visitors’ experiences whilst keeping afloat of financial needs has become a most pressing question.

Research & Ideation @ Hybrid Space Lab, Berlin, 2020

Post COVID-19 City

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of digital instruments is rapidly increasing.
As the possible consequences of digitization are more sharply outlined, this opens new possibilities for spatial organization.
This urges us to reconsider the guiding principles and models for the urbanization of technology we want to follow and what our city visions are.
We can still choose.

Publication Post COVID-19 City @ KHM #0 Magazine, Academy of Media Arts (KHM), Cologne, Germany, 1 July 2022

Hybrid Staging

With its physical distancing measures, the COVID-19 pandemic is destroying public space as we know it.
The current crisis creates the necessity – and emergency – to rethink cultural space.

Research, Lectures & Workshops @ Cultural Institutions, Germany, 2020-2021
Keynote Hybrid Space @ Culture @ Kulturstiftung des Bundes, HoloLab – dive in Program for Digital Interaction, Halle an der Saale, Germany, 16.00 – 17.00, 22 September 2021
Hybrid Workshop The Future is not Digital. Hybrid is the Future! @ Kulturstiftung des Bundes, HoloLab – dive in Program for Digital Interaction, 13.30–18.00, 14 October 2021
Workshop Hybrid Platforms @ Next Level Festival for Games, Kokskohlenbunker, Zeche Zollverein, Essen, Germany, 14.00–16.30, 14 November 2020

Networked City

What is the relationship between city visions and urban concepts from the past and today’s Smart City narratives?

Lectures & Discussion Visions, Concepts and Narratives for the Networked City @ Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Berlin, 20 February 2020

Climate City

Climate City explores how digital technologies contribute to addressing climate adaptation and develops digitalization strategies that take urban sustainability into account. Climate City focuses on digitally supported participatory climate adaptation and is committed to the idea that a smart city should be a climate-conscious city.

Lectures & Discussions Climate City @ Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Berlin, 20 November 2019

Kiez Lab

Kiez Lab is a hybrid (combined physical-digital) low-threshold cross-sector neighbourhood lab with inclusive co-creative formats to permanently bring local perspectives and civil society experiences into the digital transformation of the City of Berlin.

Publications, Presentation, Lectures & Workshops @ Alliance Digital City Berlin, Marlowes Online Magazin for Architectur and City, Berlin Science Week, Mein Berlin,Utopolis Federal Association for Social Culture, Academy for Media Arts, Berlin Cologne, Stuttgart, 2019-2022

Voiced Space

Human activity and its far-reaching interactions have always transformed territories by moving people, plants, goods and animals. As such, territories have become richly stratified – and interactions are always mutual and two-way. Countries and cities projecting their influence elsewhere have, in turn, been transformed by external inputs.
Voiced Space is conceptualized by Hybrid Space Lab for Nieuwe Instituut the Dutch institute for Architecture, Design and Digital Culture.

Lectures, Workshops & Conference International Research Program @ Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam, 2019~2022
Lecture @ Media Architecture Biennial 2020, Amsterdam, 29 June-3 Juli 2020
Lecture & Workshop @ Media Architecture Biennial 2021, Amsterdam, 27 June-2 July 2021

City to Go

The classic means of transport – car, bicycle, public transport and walking are increasingly supplemented and integrated with upcoming forms of mobility. Which user groups are the target of the new digitally supported and data-powered mobility services such as car sharing, ride sharing, rental bikes and electric scooters?

Lectures & Discussion City to Go @ Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Berlin, 15 July 2019

Tools for Heritage

By unlocking the potential laying at the intersection between arts, technology, memory studies and sciences, Deep Space has cracked open the interwoven, historically painful meanings of the controversial monument Valle de los Caídos, envisioning its possible futures, once Franco’s remains will be exhumed from the site.

Exhibition, Lecture & Discussion 5 June 2019 @ Goethe Institut, Madrid, 5 June 2019

Hybrid Heritage

How can design research contribute to the collective processing of contested heritage?How to re-signify traditional physical monuments and heritage with the help of creative visions and hybrid (combined physical and digital) tools?
Voiced Space is conceptualized by Hybrid Space Lab for Nieuwe Instituut the Dutch institute for Architecture, Design and Digital Culture.

Research @ Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam, 2019

Future Narratives and Immersive Experiences Symposium

The “Future Narratives and Immersive Experiences” symposium addresses the challenges posed by these developments by bringing together interdisciplinary co-creators in the audiovisual sector, companies with a background in media, VR/AR/MR, games, 3D sound, in the staging of productions, in communication and advertising as well as cultural and heritage institutions and players from other fields with the urge of delivering high-quality storytelling in the digital era.

Lectures, Pitches & Dinner Future Narratives and Immersive Experiences Symposium @ Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF, Potsdam, Germany, 22 May 2019

City Making in the Digital Age

Digitalization transforms our cities, with far-reaching efforts towards technology-powered increased efficiency, sustainability and at times participation. This raises new questions on privacy, data governance and (digital) design, historically unaddressed by city planning, architecture, civil society and governance. With cities worldwide striving to earn a “Smart City” reputation, it is however disputed who exactly benefits from these concepts.

Lectures & Discussion City Making in the Digital Age @ Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Berlin, 21 February 2019

City Making Lab

City Making Lab is a series of programs focusing on digitalization and the city. City Making Lab is a co-operation between Hybrid Space Lab and Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG). City Making Lab investigates ongoing developments at the intersection of cities and digital technology, engaging with urban mobility and public space, new patterns of space utilization for living and working, circular city, climate adaptation and healthy cities.

Research, Lectures & Workshops City Making Lab @ Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Berlin, 2019~2020

Deep Space

Deep Space is a long-term investigative program initiated to deal with politics of memory, controversial space and monuments, digitalization and heritage.
Deep Space: re-signifying Valle de los Caídos aims at developing creative processes, concepts, and ideas that can break through and transform the symbolic power of the place.

Workshop Deep Space: re-signifying Valle de los Caídos @ Medialab Prado & Valle de los Caídos, Madrid, 25-27 October 2018
Opening, Exhibition, Lecture & Discussion Lost Memory – Recovered Memory @ Goethe Institut & Fundación Pablo Iglesias, Madrid, 5 June 2019
Workshop & Lecture @ ISEA 2022 Symposium “Possibilities” Heritage and Futures, Centre de Cultura Contemporània, Barcelona, 12 June & 14 2022

Ethics of Technology

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

Global Challenges Smart Solutions

Highly innovative, creative and pragmatic Dutch approach to develop technology solutions for global challenges at the Hannover Messe 2014.
The Netherlands, this year’s partner country of Hannover Messe, will present the Holland Smart City House as part of the Metropolitan Solutions trade fair from Monday 07 April to Friday 12 April 2014.

Television Program: Interviews, Lectures, Talks & Discussions @ Hannover Messe, Hannover, Germany, 7-10 April 2014
Urban Screening Smart & the City @ Hannover Opera, Hannover, Germany, 7-10 April 2014

Landscape Urbanism

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

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

INbetweenSTITUTE @ 798

INbetweenSTITUTE is a strategy for strengthening the Beijing art district 798 as a resilient creative cluster and as China’s Creative Lab.

Smart & the City

From Smart City to Smart Citizen: mapping the Smart City, empowering the Smart Citizen.
Smart City is the fusion of the Urban and the Digital Age.
Ubiquitous digitalisation together with the increasing complexity of global challenges demand for interdisciplinary co-designing processes, involving society at large.

Urban Research Smart & the City @ Embassy Kingdom of the Netherlands Berlin, Ministry of Foreign Affairs Kingdom of the Netherlands, The Hague, 2 February 2014

Future Urbanism

Interview with Hybrid Space Lab by the STRELKA Institute in Moscow for the Future Urbanism project  – forty one interviews with contemporary writers, architects, sociologists, economists and city planners“Future Urbanism” project.Together with our interlocutors we searched for evidence, we questioned facts, we extrapolated from past discoveries, we speculated about hidden patterns, we looked for clues at a messy and distorted “crime scene” that is contemporary city, in order to find answers to the whole range of unsettling questions.

Interview Future Urbanism @ Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design, Moscow, 15 December 2013

Hybrid Design Institute

The merging of the three separate Dutch institutes forarchitecture, design and media, into a new hybrid institute.
Taking place today is an even more radical merger: creative production in its most various forms of expressions – whether music, graphic design, architecture, object design, video, etc. – is supported by a single tool, the computer.
This universal instrument provides a bridge which connects these very different creative fields.

Publication Rebooting Design @ The Design Journal, Volume 15, Issue 4, UK, 5 December 2012

Networked Participatory Design

Networked participatory design systems are replacing the logics of the industrial age, where the creative ones designed for the non-creative masses.

Publication Networked Participatory Design @ World Architects, 11 May 2012

Hybrid Prosumer

3D printing has developed from a specialized industry to a low cost technology that everyone can use to produce objects.
The digital blue prints of the machines and objects are designed in 3D software and can be shared via digital networks.
3D printing allows industrial production on a desktop scale enabling autonomous production for individuals and designers.

Workshop & Lecture Prosumer Technology Hybrid Design @ Beijing Design Week 2011, Building 5 No.4 Jiuxianqiao Lu, Chaoyang District, Beijing, P.R. China, 27 September-1 October 2011

Copy Culture

Design culture is obsessed with authenticity.
Copying is often deemed reprehensible, and borrowing another’s idea or incorporating elements of his or her work into one’s own is viewed as a sign of creative impoverishment. But is this right?
Hybridization is an evolutionary strategy of cumulative, dynamic cultures that are based on intercultural connections and fostered by cross-fertilization.

Lecture Hybrid Culture @ Beijing Design Week 2011, Dutch Design Foundation, Symposium Copy Culture, 798, Beijing, 27 September 2011

Soft City

Soft Urbanism stands for an interdisciplinary field that examines the “soft” aspects, the communication aspects, the city and deals with the dynamic interplay between urban development and the area of mass media and communication networks.
Soft Urbanism pursues “softer” planning approaches. Soft urbanism, as a holistic view of urbanity, is of significance to the city in both shrinking and growth regions.

Publication Soft Urbanism @ db Deutsche Bauzeitung, Germany, 1 August 2006

Idensity®

Idensity® is a conceptual tool for researching and developing space in the information/communication age.
To understand the fusions, the superimposition and the interactions of ‘virtual’ media and ‘real’ architectural and urban spaces, the new term ‘idensity®’ replaces the obsolete conventional terms of spatial distinction.

Concept & Research Idensity® © Hybrid Space Lab, Berlin, 5 May 2011

Hybrid Notations

The workshop focused on hybrid space and its notations.
Participants included architects, urbanists, landscape architects, software and hardware engineers, philosophers, theatre makers and media artists. The workshop tackled the hybridity and complexity of urban environments, relying on a wide range of fields of expertise and artistic approaches.

Publication, Workshop, Installation & Lectures FuTourism @ Centre of Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu, Torun, Poland, 3 April 2011

     

 

Shrinking Car City

Electric vehicles are regarded primarily as regards sustainability, ie as a vehicle to support the entry into the post-fossil age. At the same time, the introduction of the new electro-powered motors opens up opportunities for the redefinition of the car with far-reaching consequences: the car is shrinking – and the public space of the city can grow again.

Publication Reconquest of the City @ ZENO, Germany, 1 January 2011

Cognitive Space

Media networks are influencing and interacting with ‘real’ places. These digital information-communication networks are changing our physical environment and also the social, economic, and cultural organization of our societies in general.

Publication Space of Flows and Space of Places versus Hybrid Space @ Delft University of Technology, Delft School of Design Series on Architecture and Urbanism, Delft, the Netherlands, November 2010

Hybrid World @ Interior Worlds

Today, media networks are influencing and interacting with real places. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is radically changing the way we live, interact and perceive our world.
Politics, economics, warfare, culture are increasingly taking place in the spaces of information-communication, media networks.

Publication Hybrids @ Interior Wor(l)ds, Umberto Allemandi & C., Torino, Italy, September 2010

Hybrid Architectures of Iannis Xenakis

Iannis Xenakis (1922–2001), who was originally trained as an engineer, worked as an architect in Le Corbusier’s office.
He designed – in co-authorship with Le Corbusier – the vessel containing the Poème, the shell structure of the Philips Pavilion.
Xenakis, was to become an internationally renowned composer, and he continued his research into complex architectural forms and the equally complex ephemeral architectures of music, sound and light.

Publication Hybrid Architectures of Iannis Xenakis @ Conference Poetics of Space, Sonic Acts 2010, Amsterdam, 25 February 2010

Hybrid Habitat

Is there no security in the global world? The longing for more certainty in an increasingly complex world – and innovative solutions for coping.
Trust and certainty play an increasingly important role for people in the globalized world.

Publication, Research & Lecture Architecture of Succession @ European Forum Alpbach, Austria, 1 August 2006

Network Space

Hybrid Space Lab is concerned with how the expanding media networks interact with the physical, the public space. Their work is to be seen at the International Architecture Biennale 1ab in Rotterdam. International Architecture Biennale 1ab in Rotterdam.

Interview Many to Many, Christian Holl @ Deutsche Bauzeitung, Germany, 1 March 2006

Domotica

The property becomes the interface, the house develops into a “smart”. Network environment. Similar to the car, the connected car, which is not just a project from Microsoft, but has long been a reality.

Interview Social Construction & Technology @ BUGA, Bundesgartenschau 2005, Munich, 1 September 2005

New Spatial Paradigms

According to the traditional (bourgeois) concept of privacy, identity is based on private individuality. It is, however, important to be aware of the historicity of such a concept.
As John Lukacs writes “Domesticity, privacy, comfort, the concept of the home and of the family are, literally, principal achievements of the Bourgeois Age.”
The notion of the “privy chamber” emerged in 17th century English literature at the same time as new private physical spaces came into being, when the introduction of the corridor layout in English interiors of the 17th century enabled the development of “private quarters.”
But the expression “privy chamber” is also used metaphorically for the soul. The “privy chamber” is the container of (private) identity.

Publication Networked Architecture @ MIT Leonardo Electronic Almanac, ISBN 978-0-9833571-0-0, USA, 1 July 2005

Neighbours Network City

Neighbours Network City: a project proposal by Hybrid Space Lab for the city of Essen and the Ruhr region in Germany as the Cultural Capital of Europe.

Concept Wir essen für das Ruhrgebiet @ European Cultural Capital Ruhr, Germany, 1 March 2003

Hybrid Urbanism

Planning Paradigms for the Information Communication Age.
Hybrid Urbanism investigates the transformations of space in the information and communication age and develops and designs hybrid urban and media networks.

Lecture & Publication Idensity: Planning Paradigms for the Information & Communication Age @ CORP 2002 Conference, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, 27 February–1 March 2002

Infodrome

Infodrome is a think tank for the Dutch government in the information society. The objectives of Infodrome are gaining insight into the social consequences of the information revolution , organizing and feeding the public debate about the role of government in this, and advising the government on relevant strategic choices.

Research & Publications @ Infodrome, Thinktank of the Dutch Government, Den Haag, 1 March 2000

reBoot

For a week, from 8 till 15 October 1999, a boat descended the Rhine, the archetypal symbol of the connection between Germany and the Netherlands, as reBoot a floating media-laboratory, from Cologne on its way to Rotterdam and Amsterdam.

Concerts, Screenings, Broadcasts, Performances, Projects & Research, Art & Media Lab reBoot @ KUNST NRW.NL, Motor Boat Carolina, The Rhine, Cologne~Amsterdam, 8-15 October 1999

Idensifying® Translocalities

Hybrid Space is a new interdisciplinary field of design, researching the transformations of architectural, urban/regional space of the emerging “information age”, explores the dynamic interaction of architecture/urbanism and the space of mass media and communication networks.
Hybrid Space develops scenarios for the interplay of public urban and public media space.

Publication Idensifying® Translocalities @ Kunst NRW.NL, Amsterdam, 1 October 1999

Information Technology & the Urban

In architecture’s role of defining and materialising the spaces for social interaction, designing the relationship between the physical and digital public domain is becoming more and more of a challenge: investigating the relation and interconnection between the “soft” city with its finite material counterpart, the living environment, speculating about interfaces between the “virtual” and the material (urban) world and designing hybrid (analog-digital) communicational spaces.

Public Media Urban Interfaces

Media Babies on CHANEL NO.5 derives its strength from fragmentation in order to develop a truly public “narrow/broadcasting/catching media network. A local-based public interface the “Media Baby” is instrument that seduces its public to use and abuse the television medium, maximizing its possible spontaneity by hijacking the public’s imagination.

Publication Public Media Urban Interfaces @ Lab für Kunst und Apparate, Jahrbuch, ISBN 3-88375-324-6, , Academy for Media Arts, Cologne, Germany, 1 October 1998

Virtual Friction

The development of Virtual Reality (VR) is closely linked to the exploration of unknown territories. Virtual Reality, slowly emerging since the1920s, really took off in 1966 when NASA introduced this technology for flight simulation systems in its space program. As it was too expensive and too risky to train the astronauts by practising the real thing – launching them into the cosmos – methods had to be developed that could provide the trainees with a simulated experience: a small physical stimulus of acceleration, supported by and combined with visual information, was extrapolated and amplified in a ‘knock-on’ effect by the brains of the astronauts, providing them with the mental environment required to practise for the operation in (real) space.

Publication Virtual Reality @ de Architect, ten Hagen & Stam bv, the Netherlands, June 1998

Professor Hybrid Space

The research and seminars explore hybrid (fused physical and digital) space and how the urban can be read as a layered communication-sensitive membrane.

Head of the Department of Hybrid Space, Prof. Frans Vogelaar @ Academy of Media Arts, Cologne, Germany, April 1998

Media & The City

Public urban space and the “space” of communication networks are usually considered to be competing, even mutually exclusive frameworks for social interaction.  In fact, the traditional functions of public urban space are being taken over by telecommunication networks, their input/output devices implanted in (private) interiors. 

Publication Media & The City @ de Architekt, den Haag, the Netherlands, July 1997
Introduction Harm Tilman, editor in chief @ de Architect, den Haag, the Netherlands, @ de Architect, den Haag, the Netherlands, Juli 1997

Vilém Flusser

Architectural space and structures and the mental spaces and structures of philosophical discourses have always been associated with each other.

The new image of Man looks roughly like this: we have to imagine a network of human interrelations, a ‘field of intersubjective relations’. The strands of this web must be conceived as channels through which information (ideas, feelings, intentions and knowledge etc.) flows. When these strands knot for a moment, they form what we call ‘human subjects’. The totality of the strands constitutes the concrete sphere of life and the knots are abstract extrapolations.

Article Vilém Flusser © Hybrid Space Lab, Berlin, July 1999

Soft Urbanism

Soft Urbanism deals with information/communication processes in space, the soft aspects overlying the urban sprawl.
In architecture’s role of defining and materialising the spaces for social interaction, designing the relationship between the physical and digital public domain is becoming THE challenge: investigating the relation and interconnection of the ‘soft’ city with its finite material counterpart, the living environment, speculating about interfaces between the ‘virtual’ and the material urban world, and designing hybrid (analog-digital) communication spaces.

Research, Concept, Urban and Architectural Design Soft Urbanism © Hybrid Space Lab, Berlin, 1 December 1995

Media Babies on Chanel no.5

Telecommunications lacks the tangibility of real space. Conversely, the culture of the city needs to integrate digital technology.
How telecommunications and the city interact.
Media Babies on Chanel no.5 is a concept for a digital public structure for the city of London.

Article Network Architecture, Ed van Hinte @ Items #6, Netherlands, 20 September 1995

Demand your Right to Broadcast!

Media Babies on CHANEL NO.5 derives its strength from fragmentation in order to develop a truly public “narrow/broadcasting/catching media network. A local-based public interface the “Media Baby” is instrument that seduces its public to use and abuse the television medium, maximizing its possible spontaneity by hijacking the public’s imagination.

Demand your Right to Broadcast! @ Architectural Association, Architectural Association School of Architecture, 34-36 Bedford Square, London, 24 July 1991

Hybrid Space

Hybrid Space stands for the combinations and fusions of media and physical space. Hybrid spaces are the products of the alliances between physical objects and digital information/communication networks, of architectural/urban and media space.