PRESS

PRESS

Hybrid Space is an interdisciplinary field of design, researching the transformations of architectural, urban and regional space in the “information age”, exploring the dynamic interaction of architecture, urbanism and mass media and communication networks.

Alessandro Mendini, Proust Chair, 1978

Postradical Design Revolution

Studio Alchimia, founded in 1976 by Alessandro and his sister Adriana Guerriero,  revolutionised design worldwide.

Studio Alchimia, a post-radical avant-garde group,  brought together the most important Italian designers and architects of the 1970s and 1980s, including Alessando Mendini, Ettore Sottsass and Andrea Branzi.

Studio Alchimia existed in various constellations until it was dissolved by Alessandro Guerriero in 1992 with a performative act.

Article Studio Alchimia by Hybrid Space Lab @ archithese, Zurich, Switzerland, 8 September 2025

Studio Alchimia, the Italian group architecture and design group, revolutionised design worldwide.

This avant-garde collective dared to make a radical break with functionalism and ushered in a new era of design.

Alessandro Guerriero
founder of Studio Alchimia

June 23rd 2025, a very hot day, in the courtyard of Fondazione Prada in Milan Alessandro Guerriero, the founder of the post-radical avant-garde Studio Alchimia was interviewed by Frans Vogelaar and Elizabeth Sikiaridi of Hybrid Space Lab.

Interview with Alessandro Guerriero by Hybrid Space Lab @ Fondazione Prada, Milan, Italy, 23 June 2025

The revolution of Italian design

Alchimia, the exhibition at the Bröhan Museum is the first major retrospective of the Radical Design movement.
Frans Vogelaar was part of Alchimia in 1981-1982.

Exhibition & Publication @ Alchimia, Bröhan Museum & ADI Design Museum, Berlin & Milan, 17 April – 7 September 2025

Urban solutions

If urbanization continues to increase worldwide and cities play a decisive role in the climate transformation, business models and industries will have to evolve accordingly: Away from individual products or services towards new urban solutions in the life cycle.

Keynote & Panel weCARElab @ FUTUROMUNDO Foresight, Future Urban Economies Forum, Stuttgart, Germany, 3 July 2025

weCARElab imagines tech innovations and digital and hybrid solutions together with spatial, social and cultural aspects of health care and prevention creating 5-minute
COMMUNITIES

Future for Humboldt Forum

A look back at ten years of engagement with the Humboldt Forum as reflected in three projects by Hybrid Space Lab.

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

Wonderful proposals

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

Risk of collapse of the Humboldt Forum

When the architecture team Elizabeth Sikiaridi and Frans Vogelaar from Hybrid Space Lab proposed greening the palace façade in 2016 and based their Humboldt Jungle project on Alexander von Humboldt‘s concept of nature, Wilhelm von Boddien voiced a risk of collapse.

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

Humboldt KOSMOS

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

The Dutch journalist and art historian Merlijn Schoonenboom wrote in his book “Ein Palast für die Republik: Eine kleine Geschichte der großen deutschen Suche nach Identität“ (“A Palace for the Republic – A Brief History of the Great German Search for Identity”), that our Humboldt Forum projects provide an answer to the most pressing question of contemporary cultural identity: the search for a balance between tradition and innovation.

Radically innovative

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.

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

Digital Leaders in Architecture

Hybrid Space is the focus of the new edition of Digital Leaders in Architecture, a platform providing innovative food for thought for architects.


Interview & Lecture Hybrid Space @ Digital Leaders in Architecture, Schüco International KG, Berlin, 1 July 2022

Hybrid Space is the Ambivalent Space that is simultaneously physical and digital, virtual and material, biological and technological, local and global, tactile and abstract.

The body in space in context of the physical and digital

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

Publication Hybrid @ tanz Yearbook 2022, Germany, 19 August 2022

 

What our city visions are

As the possible consequences of digitization are more sharply outlined, this opens new possibilities for spatial organization.

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

Publication Recht auf hybride Stadt @ Marlowes Online-Magazin für Architektur und Stadt, Stuttgart, Germany, 20 May 2020

Reimagine Cultural Spaces

Hybrid Space Lab initiated research and ideation programs to reimagine cultural spaces in the context of the digital together with international partners such as Royal Academy of Art & Royal Conservatoire Hague, Sonic Acts, V2 Lab for Unstable Media, Waag Future Lab, transmediale, CTM Festival, Vibelab, Clubcommision Berlin, Kulturstiftung des Bundes, Amsterdam Dance Event & SEXYLAND World.

Concerts, Jam-sessions, Performances, Screenings & Narrow- and Broadcasts, Workshops & Lectures, @ Royal Academy of Art & Royal Conservatoire the Hague, Sonic Acts, V2 Lab for Unstable Media, Waag technology & society, transmediale, CTM Festival, Vibelab, Clubcommision Berlin, Kulturstiftung des Bundes, Amsterdam Dance Event & SEXYLAND World, 2020-2025

Publication Hybrid Culture @ Marlowes Architecture Magazine, Germany, 30 May 2025

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

Public Media

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 space.
Publication Media & The City @ de Architekt, den Haag, the Netherlands, July 1997

Spanish authorities are relocating symbols of the dictatorship.

The article on Spain’s ‘uncomfortable memory’ refers to the Hybrid Space Lab’s project Deep Space.
Deep Space is a long-term investigative program initiated to deal with politics of memory, controversial space and monuments, digitalization and heritage.

Publication Uncomfortable Memory, Sílvia Marimon Molas @ ARA Catalan Newspaper, Barcelona, 16 July 2022

 

Controversial memorial

The Valle de los Caídos is highly controversial as a memorial of the fallen of the Spanish Civil War: for a long time, it mainly served the glorification of the dictator Franco.
The “Deep Space” project wants to show visitors also the site’s dark side.

Interview, Eckhard Roelcke, journalist @ Deutschlandfunk Kultur, Germany, 8 August 2020

The dictator’s hot ashes

The Valley of the Fallen, the shrine of Franco’s dictatorship, is still dividing Spain.
With the words “Die heiße Asche des Diktators”, in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) of November 1st 2018, journalist Paul Ingendaay captures the toxicity of the highly divisive Francoist Memorial at Valle de los Caídos, as well as the urgency of Hybrid Space Lab’s workshop Deep Space: Re-signifying Valle de los Caídos.

Article The Hot Ashes of the Dictator, Paul Ingendaay @ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 1 November 2018

Pompous tomb

Hybrid Space Lab analyzed “Valley of the Fallen” near Madrid, the pompous tomb for the fascist dictator Francisco Franco, and suggests leaving it unchanged but covering it with a new critical layer by using Augmented Reality to make hidden layers visible and write history from the victim’s perspective.

Publication Informing instead of glorifying, Jørg Himmelreich, @ archithese, Switserland, 28 November 2020

Controversial history

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

Iannis Xenakis architectures

Interview with Elizabeth Sikiaridi by Britta Bürger on Iannis Xenakis architectures in the live programme “Fazit” of the German cultural radio “Deutschlandfunk Kultur” on the occasion of Iannis Xenakis‘ 100th birthday about his work and importance as an architect.


Interview in German with Elizabeth Sikiaridi by Britta Bürger on Iannis Xenakis @ Fazit, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, Live Radio, 29 May 2022

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.

Complex ephemeral architectures

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

NEWS

CircEUlar

CircEUlar is a four year European Research and Innovation Action that will develop new modelling approaches for analysing circularity from a systems perspective accounting for dematerialisation and the transition to a service-based economy to limit material stock growth, lifetime extension of material stocks through repair, maintenance, reuse, waste treatment and material recycling.

Hybrid Space Lab @ CircEUlar, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Berlin, 23 September 2025

BäumePlus Law

Hybrid Space Lab is developing a visual strategy in support of the climate adaptation law for Berlin “BäumePlus-Gesetz” that is developed by the Berlin NGO BaumEntscheid.

BaumEntscheid wants to make Berlin heat-proof and weather-proof by means of a referendum, so that life in Berlin remains bearable despite heat and extreme weather.

Berliners will vote on the law in a referendum in 2026. If the majority votes in favour, by at least a quarter of all eligible voters, the law will come into force immediately.

Climate Adaptation @ Berlin, 2025-2026

Practices of Remembrance in Spain and Germany

Deep Space is presented during the Memorias Symposium organised by the Goethe Institut and the German Federal Agency for Civic Education and supported by the Spanish Government.

Lecture Deep Space @ Symposium Memorias, Goethe Institut, Madrid, Monday 26 – Wednesday 29 October 2025

Newsletter June 2019

Future Narratives and Immersive Experiences symposium at the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF on May 22 2019 brought together interdisciplinary co-creators in the audiovisual sector, companies dealing with media, VR / AR / MR, games, 3D sound, the staging of productions, communication, heritage and cultural institutions or other fields of activity with the urge of delivering high-quality storytelling in the digital era.

Newsletter June 2019 @ Hybrid Space Lab, Berlin, 15 June 2019