news

KOSMOS @ taz

Interview by Felix Hofmann, journalist at the Berlin taz newspaper in the taz Schlossaneignung Blog.

Interview & Publication, Felix Hofmann @ taz, Berlin, 27 November 2024

Humboldt Jungle @ Schlossaneignung

An article by Philipp Oswalt, an initiator of Sclossaneignung Initiative, in DOM magazine 17, mentions Humboldt Jungle, Hybrid Space Lab’sinitiative for greening the Humboldt Forum façade.

Publication Schlossaneignung, Philipp Oswalt @ DOM magazine No. 17, DOM Publishers, Berlin, 1 November 2024

Sustainable Landscape Design and Development @ Baukultur NRW

The demands on our cities’ open spaces are far-reaching.
They should be ecologically valuable and adapted to climate change, as in view of the global climate crisis, the habitats of people, animals and plants are increasingly under threat.
Open spaces should also strengthen interaction and community building in the urban environment, be multifunctional, aesthetically pleasing and health-promoting.

Publication Sustainable Landscape Design and Development @ Baukultur NRW, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany, 15 September 2024

Wonderful Green Facade @ Tagesspiegel

Museum Director Paul Spies takes stock: “The streams of tourists are bypassing the Humboldt Forum”
There were wonderful proposals for the palace, such as a green façade.

Interview Paul Spies by Birgit Rieger @ Tagesspiegel, Berlin, 29 June 2024

Humboldt Futures @ Atlas der Datenkörper

Hybrid Space Lab developed a series of projects for the radical appropriation of the controversial Humboldt Forum in Berlin:
Whereas Humboldt Jungle formulated a strong vision for the re-wilding of the Forum and Humboldt Volcano developed a concrete architectural design solution that addresses many of the foreseeable problems in the Humboldt Forum and that could be realized in the (near) future, Humboldt Kosmos is a fictional universe based on Humboldt Forum that opens up a multiplicity of possible futures.

Publication Humboldt Futures @ Atlas der Datenkörper 2, Transcript Verlag, Germany, 27 May 2024

Poly Garden City @ SHEDIA Magazine

Playgrounds, gardens, sports areas.
The roofs of apartment buildings can become a true above-ground city, with multiple benefits for the environment and our socializing.

Interview @ SHEDIA magazine 111, Athens, May 2023

Humboldt Volcano @ RBB

A sort of staircase enveloped in jungle thickets, a waterfall and food offerings on the way up to the roof of Berlin’s city castle.

Publication @ RBB, Berlin, 5 February 2023

Daring Design @ Tagesspiegel

As adventurous as Humboldt himself: The design by the architecture firm Hybrid Space Lab for the Berlin Palace.

Publication by Julia Weiss @ Tagesspiegel, Berlin, 31 January 2023

hybrid @ tanz

Hybrid Space Lab wrote the lead article “hybrid” for tanz yearbook 2022, the international magazine for ballet, dance and performance, focussing on the body and space in the context of the physical and the digital.

Publication hybrid @ tanz, Germany, 19 August 2022

Post COVID-19 City @ Academy of Media Arts

The pilot issue of KHM Magazine (#0) entitled “Out of Time” will address questions such as: What does it mean for people in general and artists in particular to have to keep their distance? How do we experience the changing world, the fears, hopes or anger, promises and consolations? How can we react to them or think of them in terms of a changed future? How is our relationship to closeness and distance changing?

Article Post COVID-19 City @ Academy of Media Arts, Cologne, Germany, 27 July 2022

Hybrid Heritage @ Practices of Heritage

How to re-signify heritage and physical monuments with the help of creative visions and hybrid (combined physical and digital) tools? Hybrid Heritage engages with this challenge presenting a series of projects researching and designing contemporary interpretations and further development of heritage from a multicultural perspective. Including the integration of digital technology and media networks in heritage projects, Hybrid Heritage also focuses on cultural hybridity in today’s globalized world.

Publication Hybrid Heritage @ Identity and Heritage, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Stuttgart, Germany, 1 Februari 2022

reWild Autobahn @ BauNetz

Baunetz showcases ReWild Autobahn as part of the Berlin Atlas.

Publication ReWild Autobahn @ BauNetz, Berlin Atlas, Berlin, 19 November 2021

Hybrid Spaces @ Lithuanian Union of Architects

Our whole sense of reality is shaped by our hybrid existence. Hybridity is a multifaceted notion, as we are experiencing a proliferation of hybridization in all dimensions of our contemporary life. This is discussed in an article on Hybrid Space, published by the Lithuanian Union of Architects.

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

Re-Charting Places @ Designs for Vulnerable Memories

We need a fresh, radically innovative and solutions-oriented approach to address the various forms of contested heritage sites in a way that is fit for the 21st century.
Article on Hybrid Space Lab’s work on contested monuments, is published in Italy.

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

Deep Space @ Art Journal Hjärnstorm

Hjärnstorm, the Swedish independent journal of art, literature, philosophy published an article on Deep Space.

Publication Valle de los Caídos: the Digital Architecture Embraces a Painful Heritage, Cecilia Nyman @ Hjärnstorm Stockholm, 5 January 2021

Hybrid Identity @ Bauhaus University

Hybrid Space Lab contributes to the international conference “Practices of Inheritance – Metaphors, Materializations, Power Constellations” of the “IDENTITY AND HERITAGE” research cluster of the Bauhaus University Weimar and Technical University Berlin.

Lecture Hybrid Heritage @ Bauhaus University Weimar & Technical University Berlin, Conference Practices of Inheritance, Metaphors, Materializations, Power Constellations, Tempelhof Airport, Berlin, 19 November 2020

Deep Space @ Tagesspiegel

Berlin’s contribution to the debate on monuments: What to do with Franco’s mausoleum?
Do not destroy it, says the Berlin office Hybrid Space Lab as it lays out ideas for a new way of dealing with the controversial Franco memorial in the “Valley of the Fallen” near Madrid.

Publication, Bernhard Schultz, journalist @ Der Tagesspiegel, Berlin, 16 July 2020

Deep Space @ TAZ

Monuments are Vehicles of Meaning. Elizabeth Sikiaridi and Frans Vogelaar research how to negotiate monuments’ narratives and how to bring criticism.

Interview, Brigitte Werneburg, journalist @ taz, Germany, 14 July 2020

Right to Hybrid City @ Architecture Magazine Marlowes

As the use of digital instruments is rapidly increasing during the current COVID-19 pandemic, new options for spatial organization and the possible consequences of digitization are more sharply outlined. This creates the necessity to rethink the digitalization model we want to follow and to address issues such as who should benefit from digitization and what our city visions are.

Publication The Right to the Hybrid City @ Marlowes Magazine for Architecture and City, Germany, 19 May 2020

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

Humboldt Volcano @ A small history of the biggest German struggle

Hybrid Space Lab plan is in line with the undoubtedly most important question for contemporary cultural identity: the relationship between tradition and innovation. Their idea of a growing green world around the castle is the portrayal of the idea of tradition as a dynamic phenomenon.

Publication A small history of the biggest German struggle, Merlijn Schoonenboom @ Querido Publishers, Amsterdam, November 2019

Deep Space @ HuffPost

In the article “Without Franco, what to do with the colossal Valle de los Caídos?” for HuffPost, Anthony Berthelier describes the project “Deep Space: re-signifying Valle de los Caídos” with its creative approach for addressing controversial history and contested heritage.

Article Without Franco, what to do with the colossal Valle de los Caídos?, Anthony Berthelier @ HuffPost , France, 24 October 2019

Humboldt Jungle @ Der Tagesspiegel

The main Berlin newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, published an article on the Green party questions on the implementation of the Humboldt Jungle raised in the Bundestag, the German parliament.
“And in order to honor their name, the Greens asked for the “state of the considerations (…), a greenery, a so-called Humboldt Jungle, to be installed”. The brief reply: “Further measures on the facades are not provided.”

Publication Humboldt costs, yes and no @ Der Tagesspiegel, Germany, 19 July 2019

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

Humboldt Jungle @ German Parliament

One of the “questions” concerning the Humboldt Forum that the German Green Party (Fraktion BÜNDNIS 90/DIE GRÜNEN) put before the German Parliament, the “Deutscher Bundestag” on 2 July 2019 was:
Question 22: “What is the current state of the considerations on the part of the Federal Government for the greening of the facades, to install a so-called Humboldt Jungle?”

Publication 19/11306 Answer @ Deutscher Bundestag, German Federal Government, Germany, 2 July 2019

Deep Space @ France TV

Article “We come for the place, not for Franco “: El Valle de los Caídos, a tourist site almost like the others” by journalist Juliette Campion, France Televisions.

Publication, Juliette Campion @ France TV Info, Paris, 10 June 2019

Deep Space @ El País

Deep Space is an international project to re-think the burial site of former dictator Franco.Deep Space, presented at the Goethe Institut in Madrid, uses augmented reality to change the totalitarian nature of the Spanish Civil War monument the Valley of the Fallen.

Publication, Peio H. Riaño @ El País, Madrid, 6 June 2019

Crossover @ Public Diplomacy Magazine

By means of creativity, Hybrid Space Lab’s approach paves the way towards a more integrated, collective processes of memory- and meaning-making.
Bringing creativity into controversial situations informs engagement with contentious landscapes, negotiation stasis, and political reticence.

Publication Creative Crossovers @ Public Diplomacy Magazine, University of Southern California, USC Annenberg, USC Centre on Public Diplomacy, USC Masters of Public Diplomacy Program, USA, 7 June 2019

Humboldt Jungle @ Make City

Hybrid Space Lab unleashed and subsequently curated a heated discourse around this utopian proposition. The combination of tabloid-friendly imagery with international expertise on greening cities and climate change proved to be a highly effective strategy.

Publication Make City, Francesca Ferguson, MAKE_SHIFT @ Make City, Berlin, May 2019

Deep Space @ Bnieuws TU Delft

Working on places of conflict can be extremely challenging.Architecture practice Hybrid Space Lab takes a rather unique approach for the re-signification of the controversial site of Valle de los Caídos in Madrid, the burial ground of Spain’s dictator Francisco Franco and 33,000 victims of the country’s brutal civil war.

Article by Elena Rossoni @ Bnieuws TU Delft, The Netherlands, 5 February 2019

projects

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

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

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

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

Crossover Diplomacy

Article “Creative Crossovers: Negotiating Past and Future” in the University of Southern California Public Diplomacy Magazine issue summer 2019.Monuments stand as a tangible testimony to what is untouchable: memory and history in their collective dimension.As vehicles of meaning, monuments are ambassadors affecting the public negotiation of narratives

Article Creative Crossovers @ Public Diplomacy Magazine, University of Southern California, USC Annenberg, USC Centre on Public Diplomacy, USC Masters of Public Diplomacy Program, USA, 7 June 2019

Fabric

The documentary Fabric presents the history of the building complex that houses today the Athens School of Fine Arts, one the main venues of documenta 14 in Athens. It also narrates a family history that spans more than over 100 years and starting in Cappadocia in Central Anatolia, continues via Beirut and Istanbul (Constantinople) arriving in Athens in the 1920ies.

Documentary Video Fabric @ documenta 14, Athens School of Fine Arts, Peiraios Street 256, Athens, 8 April-17 July 2017

TRUST 2 design

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

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

Co-Thenticity

Copying is the strategy of cultural evolution.
Cross-fertilization, borrowing other’s ideas and incorporating elements of other’s culture into one’s own is crucial to cultural development.

Lecture Co-Thenticity @ Dutch Design Institute, Beijing Design Week, Beijing, 28 september 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.

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

Safe Space

Security is a deeply-felt and debated theme: How can we reduce risk and increase the sense of social interaction and identity of social places?
Part of the World Design Capital 2008 and based on Torino case studies and in collaboration with the Torino Integration Policies Department the workshop aims to develop new design thinking models to address these issues.
Safe Space focuses therefore not on singular solutions but on general working tools to tackle these phenomena.

Workshop Safe Space @ World Design Capital, Turin, Italy, 13-20 July 2008

Landscape BOTOX

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

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

Hybrid Urbanism

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

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

Iannis Xenakis

In the aesthetic production of the 20th century, there is a fascinating moment of artistic synergy. An architect, Le Corbusier, conceives an Electronic Poem, an electronic synthesis of visual and acoustic events, and a “vessel containing the poem” [a pavilion] for the Philips corporation presentation at the 1958 Brussels World Fair.

Research, Lectures & Publications the Architectures of Iannis Xenakis, Synthesis after Le Corbusier, Elizabeth Sikiaridi, © Hybrid Space Lab, Amsterdam, 1 June 1999

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

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.