news

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, Elizabeth Sikiaridi @ 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

For tanz yearbook 2022, the international magazine for ballet, dance and performance, we have written the lead article “Hybrid is the Future” focussing on the body and space in the context of the physical and the digital: the hybrid.

Publication Elizabeth Sikiaridi and Frans Vogelaar @ tanz, Germany , Summer 2022

Post COVID-19 City @ KHM

Publication Post COVID-19 City, Elizabeth Sikiaridi & Frans Vogelaar for Magazine #0 of the Academy of Media Arts, 27 July 2022

Publication Post COVID-19 City @ Magazine #0, Academy of Media Arts, Cologne, 27 July 2022

ReWild Autobahn @ BauNetz

Baunetz showcases ReWild Autobahn as part of the Berlin Atlas.

Publication ReWild Autobahn @ BauNetz, Berlin, Germany, 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 Space @ Regeneration [and its Discontents], Lithuanian Union of Architects, 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.

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

Deep Space @ Art Journal Hjärnstorm

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

Deep Space @ Art Journal Hjärnstorm, Stockholm, Sweden, 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.

Hybrid Identity @ Bauhaus University, 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.

Article @ Der Tagesspiegel, Berlin, Germany 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 @ TAZ, Berlin, Germany 14 Juli 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 @ Magazine for Architecture and City marlowes, Germany, 19 May 2020

Humboldt Volcano @ Querido Publishers

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, 11 November 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.

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.

Publication”Without Franco, what to do with the colossal Valle de los Caídos?” @ Huffington Post, 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 @ 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 @ Magazine for Architecture and City Marlowes, Germany, 16 July 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 Answer 19/11306, @ Deutscher Bundestag, Germany, 19 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 @ France TV, Paris, 10 June 2019

Crossover @ Public Diplomacy Magazine

Article “Creative Crossovers: Negotiating Past and Future” in the University of Southern California Public Diplomacy Magazine issue summer 2019.

Article @ Public Diplomacy Magazine, University of California, 7 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 @ El País, Madrid, 6 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.

Deep Space @ Bnieuws TU Delft

Working on places of conflict can be extremely challenging. As soon as a polarised discussion is addressed with a proposal, it is bound to cause some sort of backlash by at least one of the affected parties. There is no clear way out of it. Or is there? 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

Water Consious Fashion @ Fraulein

An initiative of the Hybrid Space Lab, in cooperation with the Neonyt Fair and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Berlin.

Publication @ Fraulein Magazine, Deutschland, 15 January 2019

Deep Space @ Het Financieele Dagblad

Frans Vogelaar wants to give the Valley of the Fallen in Spain, one of the most controversial places in the world, new meaning.
How does the founder of the Berlin design lab and think tank Hybrid Space Lab think to do that with use of digital technology?

Deep Space @ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

The Valley of the Fallen, the shrine of Franco’s dictatorship, is still dividing Spain. A workshop wants to crossfade it with new projections.

Article by Paul Ingendaay @ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany, 1 November 2018

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.

Article by Sílvia Marimon @ ARA, Spain, 31 October 2018

Humboldt Volcano @ The Vienna Hofburg

In the chapter “International Developments; The Schlossplatz and the Museum Island in Berlin” Humboldt Volcano is mentioned as the example of the rethinking of the Humboldt Forum.

Publication, The Vienna Hofburg since 1918, @ Institut für kunst- und musikhistorische Forschungen, Austrian Academy of Sciences , 2018

Humboldt Volcano @ Garten + Landschaft

How is Berlin becoming a socially just smart city?
The Make City Festival discussed ideas like a Volcano at the Humboldt Forum designed by Hybrid Space Lab.

Publication @ Garten + Landschaft, Germany, 15 August 2018

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

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, LetteraVentidue Edizioni, Syracuse, Italy, April 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

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

NatureTecture

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!

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.

Fabric is realized on occasion of documenta 14 in Athens in dialogue with the documenta 14 curator Monika Szewczyk.

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 @ de Architekt, The Netherlands, June 1998

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

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 @ World Architects, WEB, 11 May 2012

Hybrid Urbanism

Soft Urbanism is a new interdisciplinary field of planning, investigating the transformations of space in the emerging information and communication age and designing the interplay of urban and media networks.
Hybrid Urbanism investigates the transformations of space in the information and communication age and develops and designs hybrid urban and media networks.

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.

Soft City

Soft Urbanism is an interdisciplinary field that examines the “soft” aspects, the communication aspects, of the contemporary city.

Copy Culture

Hybridization is an evolutionary strategy of cumulative, dynamic cultures that are based on intercultural connections and fostered by cross-fertilization.

Media Babies on Chanel no.5

Telecommunications lacks the tangibility of real space. Conversely, the culture of the city needs to integrate digital technology

Design Zone

Transforming the facade of the Humboldt Forum into a living organism.
The special art edition of Der Tagesspiegel, the German newspaper, publishes interview on the changing role of design in times of crisis.

Idensity®

To understand the fusions, the superimposition and the interactions of media and ‘real’ architectural/urban spaces, the new term ‘idensity®’ replaces the obsolete conventional terms of spatial distinction.

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.

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

Co-Thenticity

Cross-fertilisation, 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 2011, Beijing, 28 september 2011

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.

Hybrid Design Institute

The merging of the three Dutch design related institutes, architecture, design and media, into a new hybrid design institute.

Future Urbanism

This general trend reflects on all aspects of our existence: culture, politics, economics, etc. and, of course, on cities. One of the most significant achievements of the 20th century – network technologies – have provided our planet with a totally new digital layer: virtual reality. This has given rise to a whole new sphere of interplay between urban and media networks. Communication networks are changing our society.
Interview by the STRELKA Institute in Moscow for the Future Urbanism project – forty one interviews with contemporary writers, architects, sociologists, economists and city planners.

Anastassia Smirnova, Programming Director @ Strelka Institute, Moscow, 15 December 2013

Hybrid Institute

The Nederlands Architectuurinstituut (NAi) has established a reputation as a center for all aspects of architecture in the Netherlands and as the largest architectural center in the world. But the golden times are over, the current savings policy forces to rethink. The NAi had to merge with two other institutions and is now going new ways together with these partners.

Publication The New Institute @ Deutsche Bauzeitung, Germany, 3 June 2013

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.

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 @ 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 of technology @ Bundesgartenschau 2005, BUGA, Munich, 1 September 2005

New Spatial Paradigms

New interdisciplinary fields of planning and design are introduced: Soft Urbanism, exploring the interaction of urbanism and the space of mass media and communication networks, and Hybrid Space Design, developing fused analog-digital / architectural-media spaces.

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, Den Haag, The Netherlands, March 2000

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 @ KHM Yearbook for Art and Apparatus, Academy for Media Arts, Cologne, Germany, 1 October 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

Vilém Flusser

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 @ Hybrid Space Lab, Berlin, July 1999

Complexity

Often, comparisons, parallels to landscape, are drawn to nature in the work of Behnisch & Partner.

Publication, the Work of Behnisch & Partner @ ARCH+, Berlin, 1 September 1994