#Sustainability Lab

In our time of 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.

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Urban Shrinkage @ Brandenburg University of Technology

Urban shrinkage as a chance for the cityscape?
The “Transformation Landscape” concept spotlights the left over spaces, and the landscapes in transition and in waiting.

Lecture Transformation Landscape @ Brandenburg University of Technology, Cottbus, Germany, 5 November 2015

Humboldt Jungle @ Press

Humboldt Jungle press, radio and WEB publications.

Awareness Campaign Humboldt Jungle @ Press, Germany & International, 2015-2016

Humboldt Jungle @ TAZ

At the Berlin Castle, where the baroque façade is still missing, “Humboldt Jungle” is to grow.
On Tuesday evening, the project initiators spoke to experts and representatives of the various castle initiatives about possible implementations.

Publication Seductive Image, Brigitte Werneburg, Journalist @ TAZ, Berlin, 8 July 2015

Greek Slow Food @ Markthalle Neun

Panel discussion on the Greek Slow Food movement curated by Hybrid Space Lab and Markthalle Neun in Berlin on July 17 2015.

Discussion Greek Food Culture Today @ Markthalle Neun, Berlin, 17 July 2015

Co-Creating Athens @ Lifo

Greek lifestyle magazine Lifo published article on Hybrid Space Lab’s workshop on the revision of the “hated” Athenian apartment buildings.

Article by Dimitris Kyriazis @ Lifo, Athens, 14 January 2015

German Cityscape @ Seoul National University

The international travelling exhibition presents a broad spectrum of themes in landscape architecture. It focuses on areas of the profession poised to gain international importance, illustrating the tasks and techniques of landscape design in the post-industrial age.
The exhibition provides a wealth of knowledge about landscape architecture and features examples from Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia.
An international travelling exhibition on the working fields of landscape architecture by the Chamber of Architects of North Rhine-Westphalia with the support of the Ministry for Building and Transport of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Opening Lecture NatureTecture: Sustainable Development of the Cityscape, Prof. Elizabeth Sikiaridi, 2 December 2011
Exhibition NatureTecture @ Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Seoul National University, 2-9 December 2011

Shrinking Car City @ Deutsche Bauzeitung

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 Shrinking Car City @ Deutsche Bauzeitung, Germany, 1 February 2011
Publication Shrinking Car City @ GermanArchitects, Germany, 11 May 2011

Reconquest of the City @ ZENO

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

projects

Cool Cities

With our planet getting hotter and hotter, we need to cool down our cities!
Consultancy to the Deputy Mayor of Athens for Climate Governance and Social Economy, Nikos Chrysogelos, focusing on urban climate adaptation strategies.

Consultancy Cool Down Cities @ Municipality of Athens, Deputy Mayor of Athens for Climate Governance and Social Economy Nikos Chrysogelos, Athens 25 August 2024

coSPECIESlab

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

Labs & Fests @ Glocal, 2023~2026

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

Convers@ions

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

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

reWild Autobahn

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

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

Co-Creating Hybrid Culture

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

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

Grow Your Green City

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

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

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

Water Conscious Fashion

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

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

GRÜNtopia

We are very honored that Renate Künast, politician for the Bündnis 90/Die Grünen and Member of German Parliament is opening Embassy Lab GRÜNtopia on 22 June 2018.
Green spaces are essential for the quality of life, wellbeing, and health of urban populations. Today, the focus on and interest in green urban spaces is increasing thanks to initiatives working toward Healthy Cities, environmental justice, food security, and strengthening local communities.

Lectures & Discussions Embassy Lab GRÜNtopia @ Embassy of Kingdom of the Netherlands , Berlin, 22 June 2018
Keynote Renate Künast, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen @ Embassy of Kingdom of the Netherlands , Berlin, 22 June 2018

GRÜNMANIA

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

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

GREEN Infrastucture

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

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


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

Humboldt Volcano

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

Circular Economy

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

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

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

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

Urban Incubators

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

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

Co Creating Athens

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

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

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