Think Tank

Hybrid Care brings together the physical and digital aspects of care and prevention, fostering the development of Healthy Cities – 15-minute cities with 5-minute communities.

weCARElab @ Global, 2025~2030
Keynote & Panel weCARElab @ FUTUROMUNDO Foresight, Future Urban Economies Forum, Stuttgart, Germany, 3 Juli 2025
Workshop weCARElab @ FUTUROMUNDO, Fraunhofer AIO, Stuttgart, Germany 4 Juli 2025

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.
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

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

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

Humboldt Futures offers a globally accessible co-creative gaming platform for exchange and participative collective production in order to negotiate dystopian and to envision positive cultural futures.
Humboldt Futures is an experimentation space for ideating the future of museums.
Humboldt Futures is a collaboration between gamelab.berlin and Hybrid Space Lab.

Dinner Humboldt Futures @ Hybrid Space Lab, Berlin 11 January 2024
Workshop Ideation, Presentation & Discussion Humboldt Futures @ Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, 12 January 2024

Hybrid Space Lab’s innovative concepts have been incorporated as recommendations for action in the White Paper of the Creative & Tech Festival Berlin.

Concept Hybrid & Crossover @ White Paper Creative Festival Berlin, 12 June 2023

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

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

Next Stop Culture explores the yet to be unlocked potential of unused mobility spaces in Berlin to develop concepts for new cultural spaces and to envision new typologies and patterns for a culture-powered sustainable urban development.

Workshop Co-Hosted by Clubcommission Berlin @ transmediale & CTM Festival, Re:mise, Köpenicker Strasse 18, 10997 Berlin, 25 January 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 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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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.

Lectures & Workshop Resignify City @ Media Architecture Biennale 2021, Amsterdam, Utrecht, The Netherlands, 24 June 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

Article “Creative Crossovers: Negotiating Past and Future” in the University of Southern California Public Diplomacy Magazine issue summer 2019.Monuments stand as a tangible testimony to what is untouchable: memory and history in their collective dimension.As vehicles of meaning, monuments are ambassadors affecting the public negotiation of narratives

Article Creative Crossovers @ Public Diplomacy Magazine, University of Southern California, USC Annenberg, USC Centre on Public Diplomacy, USC Masters of Public Diplomacy Program, USA, 7 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

As a consequence of the more than 65 years long near absence of human activity, the Korean DMZ  land strip has become a verdant 984 square kilometers nature reserve where endangered flora and fauna species had the chance to regain space.
The Korean DMZ has become a testimony to unintentional beauty. Thriving vegetation and undisturbed wildlife now cover the painful, conflict-born void along the military demarcation.
Over the last few years, it has gathered international attention due to its symbolic value as well as to individual and bilateral bids by North and South Korea securing UNESCO Biosphere status for areas of the DMZ.

Workshop DMZpace @ DMZ, CCL, Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea, 30 May-3 June 2010Exhibition @ Yeonnamjang Gallery Seoul, 2 May-17 May 2020
Exhibition @ Korean Cultural Center Paris, 10 September-6 November 2020

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

We are experiencing a structural change in the function of diplomats due to the changing role of the nation state in our globalized and increasingly digital and networked world.
Future Diplomacy Lab creates an inspirational space to speculate on possible diplomacy applications by projecting onto diplomacy innovative digital solutions from numerous fields.

Lectures & Workshop Future Diplomacy Lab @ Diplomacy Camp, Embassy Kingdom of the Netherlands, Brussels, 7 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

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

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

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 & Concept @ Rocket Station Hombroich, Germany, 1 April 2018

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

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.

Lectures, Workshop & Discussions Are You A Hybrid Diplomat ? @ Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Directorate-General for European Cooperation (DGES) & Innovation Team DARE, The Haag, The Netherlands, 18 January 2018

Sharing Economy is one of the phenomena of a world rapidly changing. This reshaping of the world is happening faster than the reshaping of the societies and their institutions.

Talks, Lectures, Discussions & Workshop Embassy Lab shareCONOMY @ Embassy Kingdom of the Netherlands, Berlin, 7 July 2017

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

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

The documentary Fabric presents the history of the building complex that houses today the Athens School of Fine Arts, one the main venues of documenta 14 in Athens. It also narrates a family history that spans more than over 100 years and starting in Cappadocia in Central Anatolia, continues via Beirut and Istanbul (Constantinople) arriving in Athens in the 1920ies.

Documentary Video Fabric @ documenta 14, Athens School of Fine Arts, Peiraios Street 256, Athens, 8 April-17 July 2017

Accelerating international tourism is contributing to the global prosperity and enabling intercultural exchange. Tourism is also causing congestion at its destinations, increasing the global ecological footprint, threatening local cultural traditions and upsetting established companies with flexible ‘asset-light’ digital disruptive models and start ups.

Research & Lecture Fu-Tourism @ ARTez, Arhem, The Netherlands, 10 November 2016

International interdisciplinary lab researches the potential of curating as co-creating with the public as well as the transformations of the role of the expert curator.

Lectures, Discussions & Workshops Embassy Lab Co-Creating the City @ Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Berlin, 14 October 2016
Ikarian-Cretan Dinner @ Hybrid Space Lab, Berlin, 18.00-23.00, 14 October 2016

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

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.

B.A.N.G. is the fusion of Binary, Atoms, Neurons, and Genes.
B.A.N.G. deals with the complexity of our globalized and ‘glocalized’ world.

Lectures & Workshop B.A.N.G. @ Conference Design by Culture, Berlin, 24 June 2016

Embassy Lab Future Diplomacy brings together experts from the Harvard J. F. Kennedy School of Government, the Académie Diplomatique Internationale in Paris, Global Diplomacy Lab, the German Federal Office, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, international diplomats, creative professionals, and other experts.
Digital tools enable and support participative practices and networks, trespassing all borders. In our globalized world, a whole range of transnational webs perform independently and often with no connection to the traditional channels of diplomacy.

Lectures, Discussions & Workshops Embassy Lab Future Diplomacy @ Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Berlin, 7 October 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

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

Embassy Lab Hybrid Health focuses on innovative health solutions that combine the physical and the digital and on health applications and services embedded in our daily living environment.
Kingdom of The Netherlands Minister of Health, Welfare and Sport, Edith Schippers is opening Embassy Lab Hybrid Health.

Lectures, Pitches & Workshop, Opening Edith Schippers, Minister of Health, Welfare and Sport, Kingdom of The Netherlands @ Medica, Dusseldorf, Germany, 17 November 2015

Embassy Lab Velo focuses on sustainable and innovative cycling traffic resources and knowledge exchange between the City of Amsterdam and the City of Berlin.

Bicycle Tour, Lectures & Discussions Embassy Lab Velo @ Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Berlin, 29 March 2015

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

A jungle for the Humboldt Forum!
The Berlin Humboldt Forum, named after the Humboldt brothers, will become a world center for culture and is housed in the reconstruction of a historical palace.
Hybrid Space Lab designed Humboldt Jungle a hanging garden with lianas overgrowing the Prussian palace and a tropical forest for its roof.

Research & Design Humboldt Jungle @ Humboldt Forum, Berlin, 2016-2017

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

Citizens take part in innumerable co-creation initiatives in the private and the public domains, and more importantly in the hybrid blur where the one can’t be separated from the other. These initiatives make use of recent concepts and developments, such as prosumer, bottom-up, peer-to-peer, start-up, social design, open design and design thinking. From a city perspective the well-established creative city will merge with the smart city into a new ‘Co-creative City’. From the citizen perspective the creative city and the smart city translates into the creative & smart citizen, shaping a ‘New Civic’.

Lectures & Workshops @ Make City, the festival for Architecture and City Making, Berlin 11-28 June 2015

CRISISdesign innovates in and for situations of change and crisis for communities that need new infrastructures for daily life.

Lectures & Discussions Embassy Lab CRISIS design @ Metropolitan Solutions, CityCube, Berlin, 22 May 2015

The complexity of urban systems demands the involvement of different stakeholders at a very early stage, in order to identify the challenges and define objectives.

Public Lecture Program Embassy Lab Smart City Governance @ Metropolitan Solutions, CityCube, Berlin, 21 May 2015

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

Mobility+ investigates the synergies between Smart Mobility and the different systems of Smart City and addresses mobility in all of its dimensions, incorporating topics such as Urban Service Design, Smart Tourism, Smart Retail, Healthy & Smart Cities, and Clean Tech.

Public Lecture & Workshop Program Embassy Lab Mobility+ @ BMW Welt, Munich, 25 February 2015

Embassy Lab Co-Operative is a one-day program for the Berlin visit of the Dutch Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, Ronald Plasterk, February 23rd 2015.
Next to his meeting with the German Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, Barbara Hendricks, Minister Ronald Plasterk visited Berlin urban initiatives, cooperatives and participation movements to discuss them the potential of urban co creation.

Discussions & Visits Embassy Lab Co-Operative @ Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, Berlin, 23 February 2015

Embassy Lab is innovation program and a prototype for experimenting with future functions of embassies in the current age of EUization, globalization and digitalization.
Embassy Lab at the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Berlin brings together the official traditional institution of the “Embassy” with the innovative potential of a creative “Lab”.
Embassy Lab is a think tank and innovation hub, for research and discussion, for experimenting with new models, and for presenting and communicating ideas.

Research, Workshops, Lectures & Symposiums Embassy Lab @ Embassy of the Kingdom of The Netherlands in Berlin & Kingdom of The Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Hague, 2014~2021

BioBibble is a sustainable urbanism project for the city of Beijing.

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 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

Aesthetics derives from the ancient Greek αἰσθάνομαι (aisthanomai, meaning “I perceive, feel, sense”) and thus stands for the capability to perceive Instabilities. Including unstable – open dynamic networked – systems into our realms of perception, enables us to develop an understanding in order to work with them.

Concept Aesthetics of Instability © Hybrid Space Lab, Berlin, 19 September 2014

Happy Health explores the impact of Smart Cities and related concepts and technologies on wellbeing and the prevention of illness.
Happy Health functions as a platform for exchange between innovative projects from the Netherlands and relevant German institutions and actors.
Happy Health focuses on health, the urban environment and lifestyle bringing together designers, experts and stakeholders to investigate current challenges and develop new scenarios and concepts.

Workshop & Public Lecture Program Embassy Lab HAPPY health @ DMY 2014, Tempelhof Airport, Berlin, 29 May 2014

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

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.
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

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

Copying is the strategy of cultural evolution.
Cross-fertilization, borrowing other’s ideas and incorporating elements of other’s culture into one’s own is crucial to cultural development.

Lecture Co-Thenticity @ Dutch Design Institute, Beijing Design Week, Beijing, 28 september 2011

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

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

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.
Hybrid Space Lab raises relevant questions and trigger off and support a constructive discussion in the working sessions of Infodrome with the issue paper “The use of space in the information/communication age – processing the unplannable”.

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

In the aesthetic production of the 20th century, there is a fascinating moment of artistic synergy. An architect, Le Corbusier, conceives an Electronic Poem, an electronic synthesis of visual and acoustic events, and a “vessel containing the poem” [a pavilion] for the Philips corporation presentation at the 1958 Brussels World Fair.

Research, Lectures  & Publications the Architectures of Iannis Xenakis, Synthesis after Le Corbusier, Elizabeth Sikiaridi, © Hybrid Space Lab, Amsterdam, 1 June 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 the 1920s, 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

Architecture as psychological machine.

Design & Exhibition Vivere architettando @ Palazzo Dugnani, Milan, 15 March 1982

Frans Vogelaar is responsible within the framework of the architectural and design office “Studio Alchymia” in Milan, Italy, for the design and development of the prototype and supervision of the industrial production of the chair Sabrina by Alessandro Mendini in close collaboration with the Italian renowned furniture manufacturer Driade.

Design & Prototype Development, Supervision Industrial Production Chair Sabrina by Alessandro Mendini @ Driade, Alzaia Trieste 49, Corsico, Italia, 1982

From 1981 till 1982 Frans Vogelaar was a member of the architectural and design office “Studio Alchimia” in Milan, Italy.

Design & Architecture @ Studio Alchimia, Milan, Italy, 1981-1982