#THINK TANK

“That knowledge has become the resource rather than a resource, is what makes our society “post-capitalist”.

It changes, fundamentally, the structure of society. It creates new social dynamics. It creates new economic dynamics. It creates new politics.”

Peter Drucker “Post-Capitalist Society”, 1993

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

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.

Lectures, Workshops, Symposium, FieldLab @ Hybrid Space Lab, 2022 – 2024

Conflict Space

The workshop “Conflict Space” taking place at the International Symposium on Electronic Art ISEA2022 in Barcelona deals with the re-signification of a very contentious Franco monument and is part of the ‘Deep Space’ research on the politics of memory and heritage in the digital age.

INbetweenSTITUTE

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.

Hybrid is the Future!

What are engaging, inclusive, and sustainable hybrid formats and spaces for art and culture?

Hybrid Workshop “The Future is not Digital. Hybrid is the Future!” @ HoloLab – dive in Program for Digital Interaction, 13.30 – 18.00, 14 October 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, LetteraVentidue Edizioni, Syracuse, Italy, April 2021

Resignify City

Focussing on rereading the cityscape, granting visibility and recognition to voices and histories previously silenced, the program focuses on fostering memory-making and processing through the development of innovative, participatory methods that do not physically touch the spaces involved.

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.

(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.

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.

Kiez Lab

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 one’s own hands.

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.

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?

Tools for Heritage

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

Hybrid Heritage

In a globalized world, the polyphony of voices gaining and demanding recognition generates the necessity and the possibility to reconsider contested heritage. The collective reckoning with controversial history and the processes of re-signification and restitution deal with complex issues that have to account for a multitude of claims. We therefore need a fresh, radically innovative outlook with a solutions-oriented approach to address the various forms of contested heritage – be they objects, monuments, sites – in a way that is fit for the 21st century.

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.

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

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.

Diplomacy Lab

The workshop creates an inspirational space to speculate on possible diplomacy applications by projecting onto diplomacy innovative digital solutions from numerous fields.

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.

Lectures, Discussions, @ Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Berlin, 2019-2020

Future Heritage

What’s the future like? For professionals in the exhibition business this is a very relevant and difficult  problem. Because the future does not give us any objects yet.

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?

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

Hybrid Biotope

Hybrid Biotope, a temporary co-working camp taking place at the Raketenstation Hombroich in spring 2019, explores the coming together and merging of nature and artefact and of artificial and organic life. The program focuses on developing speculative ideas for strengthening the Raketenstation Hombroich’s potential as a transdisciplinary intellectual-artistic laboratory, a Hybrid Biotope. Research 1 April [...]

GRÜNtopia

We are very honored that Renate KĂŒnast, politician for the BĂŒndnis 90/Die GrĂŒnen and Member of German Parliament is opening Embassy Lab GRÜNtopia.
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.

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!

Digital Diplomacy

Fast-paced advances in technology are creating diffuse and volatile conditions in which international actors operate. Disruptive innovations such as machine learning and big data analytics are changing governments, NGOs, the media, businesses, and in some cases entire industries. New and unexpected players entering the field are putting pressure on the traditional division of roles between politics, business, journalism and civil society.

Lectures & Workshop @ Un-Conference Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Hague, 2 February 2018

Hybrid Prosumer

The workshop is an experimental laboratory that strongly interacts with the public. During the workshop the participants learn how to use a Do It Yourself (DIY) 3D printer and how to share the digital design information of physical objects through online communities.

Hybrid Diplomacy

Hybrid Diplomacy designates the combining of traditional diplomacy and innovative diplomacy. Hybrid Diplomacy includes the collaboration between state and non-state actors in a network diplomacy that involves next to traditional diplomats and governments, also civil society and NGOs, businesses, international organizations, and other players. Hybrid Diplomacy addresses also the multiple hybridizations in the diplomatic field, including diplomatic practices that combine communication in physical space and social media, that deal with crossover issues, and that mediate in the interaction fields of different cultures.

GREENfrastucture

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.

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

news

eCommemoration Convention 2022 @ Körber Stiftung

Hybrid Space Lab is participating in the eCommemoration Convention 2022 at the Körber Stiftung.
The Körber Stiftung eCommemoration Program brings together international historians, museum makers, digital pioneers, and creatives to shape innovative and digital memory culture.

Participation @ eCommemoration Convention 2022, Körber Stiftung, 29- 30 September 2022

circulariCITY @ Bits & BĂ€ume

Workshop and presentation of circulariCITY at the Bits & BĂ€ume 2022 Conference.
Bits & BĂ€ume connect communities and stand up for political change in the interaction of digitalisation and sustainability.

Workshop & Presentation @ Bits & BĂ€ume 2022 Conference, Technical University Berlin, 30 September – 2 October 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

Deep Space @ ARA

Article by SĂ­lvia Marimon Molas in the leading Catalan newspaper ARA on how Spanish authorities are relocating symbols of the dictatorship.
“It (Augmented Reality app) would make visible what Franco wanted to hide and would bring out everything that is hidden and buried in the Valley, transforming the totalitarian story into a polyphonic memory,” says Vogelaar.
This could be a tool as long as there is no physical transformation of the Valley, but archaeologist Alfredo GonzĂĄlez Rubial, who has excavated Cuelgamuros to trace the lives of prisoners who did slave work there, believes the monument cannot be left as it is.

Article by SĂ­lvia Marimon Molas @ ARA Catalan Newspaper, Barcelona, Spain, 16 July 2022

Hybrid Heritage @ UNA Europe

Lecture at the UNA University PhD Workshop Heritage Hybridizations: Concepts, Scales and Spaces.

Lecture @ UNA University Alliance Europe\Paris, France, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University, 31 March 2021
Published @ UNA University\Paris, France, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University, 1 July 2022

ReWild Berlin @ bauhaus reuse BHROX

Hybrid Space Lab curates the pocket-size workshop on multispecies mobility at the BHROX bauhaus reuse in the framework of the Von A to B Fieldtrip – Amsterdam meets Berlin.

Lecture & Workshop @ BHROX bauhaus reuse, Berlin, 10.00-11.30, 9 February 2022

Hybrid Space @ The Future Now Show

Hybrid Space Lab lectures on Hybrid Space at The Future Now Show of the Club of Amsterdam.

Lecture @ The Future Now Show of the Club of Amsterdam, 15.00-15.30, 1 February 2022

Smart City Expert Workshop @ Smart City Berlin

Hybrid Space Lab contributes to the Smart City Expert Workshop focussing on cultural issues, fostering the co-creative process to shape the content of Berlin’s Smart City strategy.

Smart City Expert Workshop @ Berlin Senate Chancellery and CityLAB Berlin, 10:00-13:00, 7 January 2022

ReWild Autobahn @ Smart City Berlin

ReWild Autobahn is presented at Smart City Berlin „Von A nach B” – Amsterdam meets Berlin.

Presentation, ReWild Autobahn @ Smart City Berlin „Von A nach B” – Amsterdam meets Berlin,  Berlin, Germany, 9 December 2021.

Marleen Stikker @ INbetweenSTITUTE

Marleen Stikker, founder of Waag is presenting Future Lab at Hybrid Space Lab.

Presentation, Discussion Future Lab @ Hybrid Space Lab,  Berlin, Germany, 30 November 2021.

Hybrid is the Future! @ Kulturstiftung des Bundes

Workshop Hybrid is the Future! at the digital cultural innovation program dive in , Bundeskulturstiftung, Germany, 14 October 2021

Workshop Hybrid is the Future! @ dive in,  Bundeskulturstiftung, Halle an der Saale, Germany, 14 October 2021

Hybrid Space @ Kulturstiftung des Bundes

Keynote Hybrid Space @ Culture at the digital cultural innovation program dive in , Bundeskulturstiftung, Germany, 22 September 2021

Keynote Hybrid Space @ Culture @ Dive In,  Bundeskulturstiftung, Halle an der Saale, Germany, 22 September 2021

Newsletter May 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic forces us to develop visions for future hybrid (combined physical and digital) public cultural spaces.

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 @ Architecture Fund, National Gallery of Art Vilnius, Lithuania, 5 March 2020

Regeneration & Discontent @ National Gallery of Art Vilnius

The way we encounter urban transformations in the modern city vary sharply — for some, such development marks the emergence of new and ‘smarter’ future whereas for others a grave omen of a tomorrow they will have no part in. One of the most popular terms for describing these fraught changes is gentrification. While the term has been an effective means for expressing how social inequalities manifest in architecture and the urban landscape, it has a tendency of producing overly reductive narratives about predatory outsiders and local victims.

Lecture @ Architecture Fund, 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 Institut, Berlin, 16 January 2020

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 CaĂ­dos.

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.

Exhibition @ Goethe Institut Madrid, 5 June 2019 until Franco’s Exhumation

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.

Workshops, Lectures @ BĂŒndnis Digitale Stadt Berlin, Germany, 2019-2020

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.

Lectures, Discussion @ Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Berlin, 15 July 2019

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

playVOID @ Pop-Up Park

A two week program explores how the VOID in the center of the Embassy’s premises can function as a pleasurable communication space by playing, dancing, lounging, exchanging, enjoying.

Public Pop-Up Park @ the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, 16 June-1 July 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

Digital Diplomacy Un-Conference @ Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands

Fast-paced advances in technology are creating diffuse and volatile conditions in which international actors operate. Disruptive innovations such as machine learning and big data analytics are changing governments, NGOs, the media, businesses, and in some cases entire industries. New and unexpected players entering the field are putting pressure on the traditional division of roles between politics, business, journalism and civil society. And this is just the beginning: developments like artificial intelligence and blockchain technology are only just starting to have an impact.

The Hague Digital Diplomacy Camp 2018 Un-Conference, @ Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Hague, 2 February 2018

Deep Space @ (re-)Designing Affect Space

Like Space refers to self-mediated leisure spaces that act as affective backdrops for digital self-enactment.
Hybrid Space Lab is leading a master class in Madrid in 2018 and organizing an international conference and a master class with public interventions and pop-up exhibition in Berlin in 2019.

Conference, Master Class, Lecture  @ Berlin, The Hague, Madrid, Rotterdam, 2018-2019

Jungle Magic @ Duitslandnieuws

Only a few construction projects in Germany are more controversial than the rebuilding of the City Palace in Berlin. With a bold plan, the Dutch professor Frans Vogelaar knows how to break the stuck debate.In the heart of Berlin one of the most controversial buildings of the moment stands out: the rebuilding of the Berliner Stadtschloss.

Publication @ Duitslandnieuws, Berlin, 17 September 2017

Biotecture @ Central Academy of Fine Arts Art Museum Beijing

Today’s agriculture is pioneering ‘smart’ developments such as robotics and autonomous driving on farms, drones and satellite monitoring or transponder-implants. With the help of green infrastructures, precision farming methods are informing Smart City development and enabling NatureTecture, a hybrid architecture integrating nature in built environment.
25-26 November 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.

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.

Humboldt Dschungel @ TAZ, Berlin, 8 July 2015

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.