Soft Urbanism @ University of Architecture and Planning Aalborg

BETWEENstitute speculates on new hybrid models for culture and develops future visions for Berlin cultural networks involved in research, production and distribution of media culture.
SPIEL lab are creative ideation workshops investigating and activating the potentials of transmediale and CTM Festival networks.
BETWEENstitute is developed and curated by Hybrid Space Lab, on invitation by transmediale and CTM Festival.

Workshop SPIEL lab @ Hybrid Space Lab, Berlin, 10.00-13.00, 28 January 2025
Roundtable Discussion BETWEENstitute @ transmediale, Kuppelhalle silent green, Berlin, 16.00-17.30, 30 January 2025
Workshops BETWEENstitute @ Hybrid Space Lab, Berlin, 15 March-15 July 2025

KOSMOS is a prototype for innovative venues dedicated to global cultural interaction and an experimentation space for the future of museums and cultural institutions.
Offering a hybrid (combined digital/physical) infrastructure that fosters transcultural exchange, KOSMOS is open to all people and communities worldwide who have Internet access to participate in this co-creative platform, to interact and collectively envision new cultural futures.

Kosmos @ Hybrid Space Lab, 2024

festCITY consists of a radical, situated approach to embed festival and cultural events into the city. It entails a process-oriented think-tank to sustainably integrate festivals and festival designing and making into the environment, with a crossover, hybrid approach that combines Berlin’s (bio)diversity leveraging unexpected encounters and combinations from the cultural and tech fields.

Lecture FESTcity, Town Hall Meeting #1 @ betahaus, Berlin, 22 March 2023

Animal Club connects creatives, ecologists, biologists, artists, philosophers and other experts with professionals from the club scene to generate new concepts and develop new business models for a sustainable future of clubbing and culture.

Presentation, Workshop, Panel, Party @ Amsterdam Dance Event @ SEXYLAND World, Amsterdam, 16.00-24.00, 2022

Animal Club connects creatives, ecologists, biologists, artists, philosophers and other experts with professionals from the club scene to generate new concepts and develop new business models for a sustainable future of clubbing and culture.

Presentation, Workshop, Panel & Party Animal Club, Co-Hosted by VibeLab @ Amsterdam Dance Event, SEXYLAND World, 1 Noordwal, 1021 PX Amsterdam, 20 October 2022

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

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

The future of culture is hybrid. Cultural innovation lies in the cross-pollination between different fields, approaches and expertise.

Lectures, Presentations, Discussions & Cooking @ Hybrid Space Lab, Berlin, 2021~2023
Presentation & , Discussion Marleen Stikker, founder and director Waag Future Lab for Design and Technology @ Hybrid Space Lab, Berlin, 18.00-20.00, 30 November 2021
Presentation & Discussion Hybrid Face, Merlijn Schoonenboom, cultural historian and journalist @ Hybrid Space Lab, Berlin, 18.00-21.00, 19 May 2023
Cooking & Sound,  The Common Meal, FM Einheit, musician, sound researcher, actor, composer, producer and founding member Einstürzende Neubauten, LI Zhenhua, master chef, curator, poet, filmmaker and artist, Prof. Dr. Siegfried Zielinski, media archaeologist, writer and curator @ Hybrid Space Lab, Berlin, February 2023

What are engaging, inclusive, and sustainable hybrid formats and spaces for art and culture?
For the German Federal Cultural Fund Hybrid Space Lab developed a workshop on the hybrid future of culture.

Hybrid Workshop “The Future is not Digital. Hybrid is the Future!” @ Kulturstiftung des Bundes, HoloLab – dive in Program for Digital Interaction, Halle an der Saale, Germany 14 October 2021

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

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

Club Futures is an international laboratory with the aim of developing new perspectives for the club and cultural scene.

Exchange, Ideation, Research, Panels, Parties, Prototyping, Workshops @ Club Futures, Hybrid Space Lab, Berlin & Amsterdam, 2022~2023

Hybrid Platforms develops con­cepts and ideas for new cultural formats and is organized and curated by the NRW KULTURsekretariat and Hybrid Space Lab.

Workshop Hybrid Platforms @ Next Level Festival for Games & NRW KULTURsekretariat, Kokskohlenbunker, Zeche Zollverein, Essen, Germany, 14 November 2020

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

Reboot Culture experiments with collective cultural experiences deeply rooted in urban space, combining public physical space and public digital space. Through hybrid formats and the support of a mobile, modular media infrastructure, the program engages with practices that can make culture ‘go-round’ in its hybridity, embedding cultural co-creation in the city fabric. With floating stage and studio facilities at the riversides Reboot Culture merges (urban) landscapes with Hybrid Staging, developing a strong symbolic momentum for the rebooting of culture.

Concerts, Jam-sessions, Performances, Screenings & Narrow- and Broadcasts @ Instrument Inventors, Royal Academy of Art & Royal Conservatoire the Hague, Sonic Acts, V2 Lab for Unstable Media, Waag technology & society, The Netherlands, 2020-2021

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.

Research & Ideation @ Hybrid Space Lab, Berlin, 2020

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

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.

Research, Lectures & Workshops @ Cultural Institutions, Germany, 2020-2021
Keynote Hybrid Space @ Culture @ Kulturstiftung des Bundes, HoloLab – dive in Program for Digital Interaction, Halle an der Saale, Germany, 16.00 – 17.00, 22 September 2021
Hybrid Workshop The Future is not Digital. Hybrid is the Future! @ Kulturstiftung des Bundes, HoloLab – dive in Program for Digital Interaction, 13.30–18.00, 14 October 2021
Workshop Hybrid Platforms @ Next Level Festival for Games, Kokskohlenbunker, Zeche Zollverein, Essen, Germany, 14.00–16.30, 14 November 2020

What is the relationship between city visions and urban concepts from the past and today’s Smart City narratives?

Lectures & Discussion Visions, Concepts and Narratives for the Networked City @ Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Berlin, 20 February 2020

Climate City explores how digital technologies contribute to addressing climate adaptation and develops digitalization strategies that take urban sustainability into account. Climate City focuses on digitally supported participatory climate adaptation and is committed to the idea that a smart city should be a climate-conscious city.

Lectures & Discussions Climate City @ Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Berlin, 20 November 2019

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

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.
Voiced Space is conceptualized by Hybrid Space Lab for Nieuwe Instituut the Dutch institute for Architecture, Design and Digital Culture.

Lectures, Workshops & Conference International Research Program @ Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam, 2019~2022
Lecture @ Media Architecture Biennial 2020, Amsterdam, 29 June-3 Juli 2020
Lecture & Workshop @ Media Architecture Biennial 2021, Amsterdam, 27 June-2 July 2021

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?

Lectures & Discussion City to Go @ Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Berlin, 15 July 2019

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

Exhibition, Lecture & Discussion 5 June 2019 @ Goethe Institut, Madrid, 5 June 2019

How can design research contribute to the collective processing of contested heritage?How to re-signify traditional physical monuments and heritage with the help of creative visions and hybrid (combined physical and digital) tools?
Voiced Space is conceptualized by Hybrid Space Lab for Nieuwe Instituut the Dutch institute for Architecture, Design and Digital Culture.

Research @ Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam, 2019

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.

Lectures, Pitches & Dinner Future Narratives and Immersive Experiences Symposium @ Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF, Potsdam, Germany, 22 May 2019

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.

Lectures & Discussion City Making in the Digital Age @ Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Berlin, 21 February 2019

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.

Research, Lectures & Workshops City Making Lab @ Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Berlin, 2019~2020

Deep Space is a long-term investigative program initiated to deal with politics of memory, controversial space and monuments, digitalization and heritage.
Deep Space: re-signifying Valle de los Caídos aims at developing creative processes, concepts, and ideas that can break through and transform the symbolic power of the place.

Workshop Deep Space: re-signifying Valle de los Caídos @ Medialab Prado & Valle de los Caídos, Madrid, 25-27 October 2018
Opening, Exhibition, Lecture & Discussion Lost Memory – Recovered Memory @ Goethe Institut & Fundación Pablo Iglesias, Madrid, 5 June 2019
Workshop & Lecture @ ISEA 2022 Symposium “Possibilities” Heritage and Futures, Centre de Cultura Contemporània, Barcelona, 12 June & 14 2022

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

Highly innovative, creative and pragmatic Dutch approach to develop technology solutions for global challenges at the Hannover Messe 2014.
The Netherlands, this year’s partner country of Hannover Messe, will present the Holland Smart City House as part of the Metropolitan Solutions trade fair from Monday 07 April to Friday 12 April 2014.

Television Program: Interviews, Lectures, Talks & Discussions @ Hannover Messe, Hannover, Germany, 7-10 April 2014
Urban Screening Smart & the City @ Hannover Opera, Hannover, Germany, 7-10 April 2014

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

INbetweenSTITUTE is a strategy for strengthening the Beijing art district 798 as a resilient creative cluster and as China’s Creative Lab.

From Smart City to Smart Citizen: mapping the Smart City, empowering the Smart Citizen.
Smart City is the fusion of the Urban and the Digital Age.
Ubiquitous digitalisation together with the increasing complexity of global challenges demand for interdisciplinary co-designing processes, involving society at large.

Urban Research Smart & the City @ Embassy Kingdom of the Netherlands Berlin, Ministry of Foreign Affairs Kingdom of the Netherlands, The Hague, 2 February 2014

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

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 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

3D printing has developed from a specialized industry to a low cost technology that everyone can use to produce objects.
The digital blue prints of the machines and objects are designed in 3D software and can be shared via digital networks.
3D printing allows industrial production on a desktop scale enabling autonomous production for individuals and designers.

Workshop & Lecture Prosumer Technology Hybrid Design @ Beijing Design Week 2011, Building 5 No.4 Jiuxianqiao Lu, Chaoyang District, Beijing, P.R. China, 27 September-1 October 2011

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 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® 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.

Concept & Research Idensity® © Hybrid Space Lab, Berlin, 5 May 2011

The workshop focused on hybrid space and its notations.
Participants included architects, urbanists, landscape architects, software and hardware engineers, philosophers, theatre makers and media artists. The workshop tackled the hybridity and complexity of urban environments, relying on a wide range of fields of expertise and artistic approaches.

Publication, Workshop, Installation & Lectures FuTourism @ Centre of Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu, Torun, Poland, 3 April 2011

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

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.

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

The international travelling exhibition NatureTecture presents the fields of landscape architecture in all their breadth and relevance.
The exhibition is based on landscape architectural expertise from North Rhine-Westphalia and refers to examples of landscape architecture from NRW.
NatureTecture focuses on those fields of work that will become increasingly important internationally for the design of our living environments and formulates relevant questions for the future.
The NatureTecture exhibition is dedicated to the tasks and instruments of qualifying landscape in the post-industrial age.
The international travelling exhibition on the fields of work of landscape architecture is organized by the Chamber of Architects of North Rhine-Westphalia with the support of the Ministry of Building and Transport of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Concept NatureTecture @ Chamber of Architects, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, 1 September 2009
Exhibition NatureTecture @ Chamber of Architects, Düsseldorf, Germany 11 Februar -17 March 2010
Exhibition NatureTecture @ Representation of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia to the European Union, Berlin, Germany, 9 June-12 July 2010
Exhibition NatureTecture @ Chamber of Architects of Jeollabuk-Do Province (KIRA Jeonbuk), Republic of Korea, 1 September- 4 September 2010
Exhibition NatureTecture @ Building Culture Fair Daejeon 2010, Republic of Korea, 14-19 October 2010
Exhibition NatureTecture @ Architecture and Urbanism Fair Gwangju, Republic of Korea, 3-7 November 2010
Exhibition NatureTecture @ Turkish Chamber of Architects of the Metropolis of Istanbul, Turkey, 26 November-10 December 2010
Exhibition NatureTecture @ 20th Anniversary of German Reunification, Busan, Republic of Korea, 8-14 December 2010

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

Is there no security in the global world? The longing for more certainty in an increasingly complex world – and innovative solutions for coping.
Trust and certainty play an increasingly important role for people in the globalized world.

Publication, Research & Lecture Architecture of Succession @ European Forum Alpbach, Austria, 1 August 2006

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

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

Neighbours Network City: a project proposal by Hybrid Space Lab for the city of Essen and the Ruhr region in Germany as the Cultural Capital of Europe.

Concept Wir essen für das Ruhrgebiet @ European Cultural Capital Ruhr, Germany, 1 March 2003

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 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

For a week, from 8 till 15 October 1999, a boat descended the Rhine, the archetypal symbol of the connection between Germany and the Netherlands, as reBoot a floating media-laboratory, from Cologne on its way to Rotterdam and Amsterdam.

Concerts, Screenings, Broadcasts, Performances, Projects & Research, Art & Media Lab reBOOT @ KUNST NRW.NL, Motor Boat Carolina, The Rhine, Cologne~Amsterdam, 8-15 October 1999

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

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

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

The research and seminars explore hybrid (fused physical and digital) space and how the urban can be read as a layered communication-sensitive membrane.

Head of the Department of Hybrid Space, Prof. Frans Vogelaar @ Academy of Media Arts, Cologne, Germany, April 1998

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

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.

Article Vilém Flusser © Hybrid Space Lab, Berlin, July 1999

Soft Urbanism deals with information/communication processes in space, the soft aspects overlying the urban sprawl.
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 THE challenge: investigating the relation and interconnection of 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) communication spaces.

Research, Concept, Urban and Architectural Design Soft Urbanism © Hybrid Space Lab, Berlin, 1 December 1995

Technological concept and realization of the digital simulation “HOUSE” for the artist Jan van der Pavert.
The digital simulation was exhibited amongst others in Centraal Museum in Utrecht, 1995 , at the “XIX Triennale di Milano” in 1996, Italy, and at the Dutch Architectural Institute (NAi) in Rotterdam, 1997, and won the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Art in 1998.

Concept & Realisation @ Montevideo, Amsterdam 1991-1992
Exhibition @ Centraal Museum, Utrecht, 1995
Exhibition Realspace in Quicktimes @ XIX Triennale di Milano, Milan, 1996
Publication Realspace in Quicktimes, Ole Bouman @ Nai Publishers, Rotterdam, 1996
Exhibition Realspace in Quicktimes @ Netherlands Architectural Institute Nai, Rotterdam, 1997
Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Art @ Amsterdam, 1998

Hybrid Space is the fusion of digital and physical space.
Hybrid Spaces are the products of the alliances between physical objects and digital information-communication networks, of architectural-urban and media space.
Hybrid Space is the ambivalent space that is at the same time analog and digital, virtual and material, biological and technical, local and global, tactile and abstract.

Concept Hybrid Space © Hybrid Space Lab, Berlin, 1988~2024

Hybrid Space Lab’s contribution entitled “Bismarck Beyond” to the Bismarck Neu Denken competition is exhibited at Foundation Historical Museums Hamburg from 26 July till 16 August 2023.

Bismarck Beyond @ Foundation Historical Museums Hamburg, 26 July-16 August 2023

ReWild Autobahn is presented at the gallery of the Association of German Architects.

Exhibition ReWild Autobahn @ BDA Gallery, Mommsenstrasse 64, Berlin, 6 October-26 November 2021

The Paris exhibition “Negotiating Borders – Real DMZ Project” features Hybrid Space Lab’s DMZpace, a project deploying the potential of the border area as a site of both historical wounds and flourishing nature.

Exhibition DMZpace @ Korean Cultural Center, Paris, 10 September-6 November 2020

Featured in the “DMZ Landscape: Cheorwon” exhibition in Seoul, Hybrid Space Lab’s DMZpace project unfolds the potential of the no-man’s-land border area to overcome the tension between its historical wounds and the thriving nature. Opening up scenarios for reconciliation and dialogue through the mediation of a now lush natural biotope, the project unveils the contradictions hidden behind the visible landscape at the Korean Demilitarized Zone.

Exhibition DMZpace @ Yeonnamjang Underground Gallery, Seoul, 2 May-17 May 2020

Public space installation, lecture and panel discussion together with Miquel Gonzalez, Photographer, Emilio Silva, Journalist, Prof. Gutmaro Gomez Bravo and Hybrid Space Lab at the Goethe Institut in Madrid.

Opening, Exhibition, Lecture & Discussion Lost Memory – Recovered Memory, Deep Space @ Goethe Institut, Madrid, 5 June 2019

At the Art Museum of China the exhibition space will be transformed into a creative laboratory, an interdisciplinary platform co-developed by international artists, creative thinkers, independent scholars, urban planners and stakeholders. It is a union, a mini co-op city inside a skyscraper.

Exhibition GreenTopia @ Art Museum of China, Greater Bay Area, Shenzhen, P.R. China, 15 March-15 April 2019

The documentary “Fabric” that Hybrid Space Lab produced for “documenta 14” in 2017 and that narrates a Middle Eastern family story as well as the history of the industrial complex that today houses the Athens School of Fine Arts is part of major Greek archives.

Archive Fabric @ documenta 14, Athens School of Fine Art, Athens, 15 February 2019

TRACES is a three-year research project investigating the role of contentious heritage in contemporary Europe.
By deploying an innovative research methodology based on an artistic/ethnographic approach, TRACES analyses challenges, opportunities and practices inherent in transmitting difficult pasts and heritages.
Hybrid Space Lab presents Deep Space the a long-term investigative program initiated to deal with politics of memory, controversial monuments and heritage.

Lecture & Discussion @ TRACES, Politecnico di Milano School of Architecture, via Ampère 2, Milan, 25 January 2019

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.

Opening & Press Conference Public Pop-Up Park @ Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Berlin, 15 June 2018
Reading, Presentation & Discussion Alexander von Humboldt and Humboldt Volcano @ Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, MakeCity Festival, Berlin, 15 June 2018

Public screening of the documentary “Fabric” at the exhibition “MADE IN GREECE” of the Athens Industrial Gas Museum at the venue INNOVATHENS.
“Fabric” was produced for “documenta 14” that took place in Athens in spring 2017.
The documentary narrates the history of the industrial complex that today houses the Athens School of Fine Arts.

Public Screening Fabric @ Technopolis, Athens, 11 March 2018

The Urban Garden Kit at the Urbanism and Architecture Bi-City Biennial (UABB) brings together urban planners, architects and landscapers, artists and curators, game developers and communication experts and other creative professionals.

Lecture, Workshop & Exhibition @ UABB 2017, Hong Kong & Shenzhen, P.R. China, 16-22 December 2017

Humboldt Volcano is exhibited at the Crossing Border | Border Crossing, International Festival of Intermedia in Hong Kong. Humboldt Volcano, a hybrid building and vertical garden, is such an ‘inter-media’, as it opens up and enables the appropriation of the Berlin Humboldt Forum by an international multicultural public.

Exhibition International Festival of Intermedia @ Hong Kong Jockey Club, Hong Kong, 9-22 October 2017

CLASH refers to the clash of the encountering systems and functions as a social tool for bargaining, exchange and cross-fertilization.
CLASH is made out of elements that are to be transformed and expanded by visitors, tourists, artists, and inhabitants of Xi’an.
The futuristic and utopian installation CLASH embraces a social space and a shelter.

Exhibition CLASH @ Xi’an Art Museum, Xi’an, Shaanxi, P.R. China, 16 September-3 October 2017
Forum @ Xi’an Art Museum, Xi’an, Shaanxi, P.R. China, 10 September 2017

The exhibition Silk Road, Portal to World Imagination at the Xi’an Art Museum in China re-imagines the cities along the Silk Road. Smart & the City showcases the integration of Smart Technologies and the Urban, as tools for a sustainable New Smart Silk Road.

Exhibition The 4 Session of the Silk Road International Art Festival @ Xi’an Art Museum, Xi’an, Shaanxi, P.R. China, 16 September-3 October 2017

Soft Urbanism, a vision of the urban in the digital age, based on a “Network Paradigm” approach to urbanism, reinvents the historic networks, connecting them to today’s hybrid, combined urban and media, networks, accelerating them into the future.

Exhibition The 4 Session of the Silk Road International Art Festival @ Xi’an Art Museum, Xi’an, Shaanxi, P.R. China, 16 September-3 October 2017

Fabric is a documentary film and exhibition on the history of the buildings of the former textile factory which now houses the Athens School of Fine Arts. Fabric is shown at the documenta 14 in the Former Library at the Athens School of Fine Arts.
8 April–17 September 2017.

Humboldt Volcano and Humboldt Jungle are part of the exhibition “Palace.City.Berlin.” in Ephraim Palais in Berlin.
The exhibition is devoted to the Berlin Palace and its significance for the city and its inhabitants.

Exhibition Humboldt Forum Future Palace.City.Berlin. @ Ephraim Palace, Berlin, 25 November 2016-23 April 2017

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.

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

798 and the Creative Cluster Conundrum is a highly ambitious and innovative project in order to plan the next step of Beijing’s renowned 798 Art District and is presented during Beijing Design Week.

Workshop & Presentation INbetweenSTITUTE @ Urban China Magazine, Beijing, 26 – 27 September 2016

City Kit is a combined urban-computer game to upgrade your neighborhood.
City Kit was developed for the Hong Kong Social Housing Authority with as a target group young people that are familiar with computer games but hardly play outside.

Exhibition City Kit @ JCCAC Crossing Border Festival, Hong Kong, 1-7 February 2016

Hybrid Heritage is researching and designing contemporary interpretations and further development of heritage under a multicultural perspective.

Exhibition Hybrid Heritage @ Beijing Design Week 2015, Baitasi ReMade, no. 4 West Gongmenkou Hutong, Xicheng District, Beijing, 25 September-7 October 2015
Lecture Hybrid Heritage @ Baitasi Info Hub, No. 313 Fuchengmen Inner Street, Xicheng District, Beijing, 26 September 2015
Workshop Hybrid Heritage @ Media Lab, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, 26-27 September

The animation film Smart & the City brings the themes processed at the “Metropolitan Solutions fair into the public realm, communicating to a general audience in a fresh, vibrant and generally comprehensive way.

Urban Screening Energy City, Water City, Green City, Participatory City @ Opera, Hannover, 7-11 April 2014
Publication Smart & the City @ Hannoversche Allgemeine, Hannover, 9 April 2014

Merkel admonishes industry. Holland lets opera shine.And its European neighbour is bringing the atmosphere of the trade fair directly into the city: films about the “City of the Future” will be projected onto the façade of the opera house every evening until Wednesday.

Projection Smart & The City @ Opera, Hannover, Germany, 5 April 2014

Exhibition at the Triennale di Milano reflecting on the themes of mobility, of living and working and imagining how energy research , new materials and ICT technologies will shape our daily over the next 20 years.

Exhibition Mobility Living Working @ Triennale di Milano, Milan, 9 October – 22 December 2013

Hybrid Space Lab’s project City Kit is exhibited in the After City exhibition at the Jockey Club Creative Arts Centre in Hong Kong.

Exhibition City Kit @ Hong Kong Jockey Club, After City, Hong Kong, 1-6 October 2013

Hybrid Space Lab’s work is exhibited within the framework of the Dynamik und Wandel. Entwicklung der Städte am Rhein exhibit at the Liebfrauenkirche Duisburg (September 9th 2013 to October 13th 2013), organized by the Museum für Architektur und Ingenieurkunst NRW.

Exhibition Future Vision @ Museum for Architecture & Engineering NRW, Cologne, Germany, 9 September-13 October 2013

Hybrid Space Lab’s work is exhibited at the Refugium: Berlin as a Design Principle exhibition at Tempelhof Flughafen Berlin.

Lecture & Exhibition @ DMY International Design Festival, Berlin Design Week 2013, Flughafen Tempelhof, Berlin, 5-9 June 2013

Hybrid Space Lab’s work is exhibited in the U.F.O. exhibition at the Jockey Club Creative Arts Centre in Hong Kong.

Exhibition @ Jockey Club Creative Arts Centre, Hong Kong, 23 May-23 June 2013

CITY KIT is a combined urban-computer game to upgrade your neighborhood.
The CITY KIT project was developed for the Hong Kong Social Housing Authority with as a target group young people that are familiar with computer games but hardly play outside.

Exhibition & Publication Dream Society @ Culture Station Seoul 284, Seoul, South Korea, 20 April-26 May 2013

Hybrid Space Lab’s work is exhibited within the framework of the Dream Society exhibition at the Culture Station Seoul 284 from April 4th 2013 till May 26th 2013.

Exhibition Dream Society @ Culture Station 284, Seoul, South Korea, 4 April-26 May 2013

Exhibition and lecture Simple City at the architecture and design festival Plan 12 in Cologne.

Lecture Simple City @ plan12, Cologne, 22 September 2012
Exhibition Simple City @ plan12, Cologne, 21-28 September 2012

From stacking living spaces as efficiently as cardboard boxes to constructing strange amorphous objects according to standard computing power, architects can apparently do anything with the help of modules.
Consequently, “Architectural Particles – Modular Building in the Digital Age” is the highlight of the so-called Architecture Year 2012 at the Museum of Applied Arts Cologne (MAKK).

Publication Simple City, Uta Winterhager @ Bauwelt, Germany, 12 September-13 November 2012

Architectural Particles – Modular Building in the Digital Age is an exhibition on modular digital architecture.

Exhibition Simple City @ MAKK Museum for Applied Arts, Modular Building  in the Digital Age , Cologne, 12 September -13 November 2012

Coinciding with the rise of digital tools that foster participatory systems, Hybrid Space Lab is an entity that exists in the realm between architect and client, the traditional shapers of space.
Here Elizabeth Sikiaridi and Frans Vogelaar of Hybrid Space Lab share three of their projects (CITY KIT, DIY Pavilion, SIMPLE CITY) and their thoughts on networked participatory design systems today.

Publication Simple City @ World Architects eMagazine, 1 May 2012

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

Hybrid Space is the superimposition and layering of physical, informational and media infrastructures, and social, cultural and economic flows.
Hybrid Space is the fusion of Physical and Digital Space.

Lecture Hybrid Space @ Conference Poetics of Space, Sonic Acts 2010, Amsterdam, 26 February 2010

Winter Worm Summer Herb pavilion is designed by Hybrid Space Lab for the 2009 Hong Kong & Shenzhen Bi-City Bienniale of Urbanism & Architecture.
Winter Worm Summer Herb contains 9 video art works by Yang Yong, Jiang Zhe, Xu Tan, Leung Meeping, Kwan Ng, Urbanus, and Hybrid Space Lab.
The mobile and collapsible pavilion will travel to 4 locations in Hong Kong and Shenzen.

Publication & Exhibition Winter Worm Summer Herb @ 2009 Hong Kong & Shenzhen Bi-City Bienniale of Urbanism & Architecture, Hong Kong & Shenzhen, 1 December 2009-15 February 2010

Playing the game City Kit, you adapt a digital version of your local surroundings according to your desires. In a switch from changes in the neighbourhood that are beyond your control, City Kit makes you the architect, urban planner, environmental expert or designer. City Kit is currently shown with a presentation and demo version and soon you will be able to play and experience the game at Platform 21 during Checking Reality.

Exhibition City Kit @ Checking Reality, Dutch Design Foundation Premsela, Platform 21, Amsterdam, 18 May-27 August 2008
Publication @ Curatorial Cooking, Dutch Design Foundation Premsela, Platform 21, Amsterdam, 18 May 2008
Lecture Participatory Design @ Club Real #4, Dutch Design Foundation Premsela, Platform 21, Amsterdam, 27 August 2008

International Architecture Biennial Rotterdam event is held every two years in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam, itself recognized worldwide as an architectural trendsetter.
The International Architecture Biennial focuses 2003 entirely on the theme of ‘mobility’, examining the issue of modern-day mobility and the consequences for architecture and urban development.

Lecture & Exhibition @ International Architecture Biennal, Rotterdam, 7 May-7 July 2003

Interaction or Manipulation?
Man – Mass – Media, conference and exhibition organised by the Internationales Forum für Gestaltung in Ulm.

Exhibition & Lab @ Internationales Forum fur Gestaltung, Ulm, Germany, 20-22 September 1996

A colossal De Klerk, complex dream-pictures in wood or a monkey with a transistor radio and a bright pink rear end. Rotterdam’s Museum of Ethnology is showing some 30 sculptures by South African Venda artists in a remarkable display. ‘If there is one general characteristic to be given to contemporary African art, it is an unstoppable narrative drive.’

Publication The storytelling art of the Venda, Paul Faber @ Museum magazine Vitrine, Rotterdam 1 August 1994

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.

Demand your Right to Broadcast! @ Architectural Association, Architectural Association School of Architecture, 34-36 Bedford Square, London, 24 July 1991

Exhibition and publication at the Architectural Association School of Architecture on Networked Architecture.

Exhibition & Publication Demand Your Right To Broadcast @ Architectural Association, Architectural Association School of Architecture, 34-36 Bedford Square, London, 17-21 June 1991

Exhibition presents the project “Media Babies on CHANEL no.5:” the fusion of media, architecture and urbanism.

Exhibition & Publication Future Media Space @ Architectural Association, Architectural Association School of Architecture, 34-36 Bedford Square, London, 28-30 June 1990

Exhibition and publication at the Architectural Association School of Architecture on Architecture & High-Touch and Tech Surfaces.
Networked Urbanism: merging digital and physical space.

Exhibition & Publication Hybrid Space @ Architectural Association, Architectural Association School of Architecture, 34-36 Bedford Square, London, 17-21 June 1989

Frans Vogelaar produced a magnificent and dazzling scale model that, if executed, would have had an overwhelming and disconcerting effect on the visitor.
The open network of forms constructed from scrap-like material was therefore called a “brilliant plan” by the jury.

Publication Frans Hals Prize for Exhibition Design, Carel Kuitenbrouwer @ NRC Handelsblad, Rotterdam, 14 September 1988

The Uruba exhibition features traditional fabrics and clothing, was brought together by the Ahmadu Bello University of Zaria in Nigeria with the cooperation of the Ministry of Culture in Lagos and was previously on display at the Commenwealth Institute in London.

Exhibition Uruba, Article by Saskia de Bodt  @ NRC Handelsblad, Rotterdam Library, Museum for Ethnlogy, 29 Januari 1985

House for Juliet is an intervention by Alessandro Mendini in the building that according to legend (and partly but only partly according to history and findings) is identified as a wing of the Capulets’ palace.

Design & Exhibition, House for Juliet, Studio Alchimia @ Achille Forti Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art,  Via Cappello, Verona, Italy, 8 June-30 September 1982

You don’t really know what design is anymore, and talking about design, happy or unhappy, fails you; rock has saved your life.

Exhibition & Publication on Studio Alchimia, Stefano Casciani @ Nuove Intenzioni del Design, Reggio Emilia, Italy, 18 April 1982