Making Futures Bauhaus+ is an action research project that addresses questions of architecture as a collective form and architecture as a resource. Departing from these two perspectives, it operates as an experimental research unit that advances future paths for architectural practice and education. It was initiated in 2018 as a cooperation between raumlabor and the Berlin University of the Arts on the occasion of the Bauhaus’ centenary.

Architecture as a collective form brings together the cultural, the social, the economic and the political. It traverses diverse entities and scales: objects, bodies, buildings, cities; the human and the planetary. It invites us to reflect our built environment beyond obsolete dichotomies such as public and private, living and working, urban and rural.

Primarily driven by fast-paced growth and innovation imperatives, the construction industry is the largest waste producer. There is an unbalance between the energy it consumes and its capacity to repurpose it. Exploring architecture as a resource involves looking at longer-lasting dynamics, such as recuperation and maintenance in the production and reproduction of space.

Leading up to a Summer Academy in September 2019, Making Futures Bauhaus+ devises a public learning program that continuously explores future modes of architectural and urban practice. Spanning over a year and a half, a Plug-In at Floating University Berlin (April-September 2018) and three mobile workshops in Istanbul (September 2018), Palermo (October 2018) and Thüringen (March 2019) constitute the project as an open, reflexive and practice driven format. The Summer Academy in Berlin will explore forms of productive cooperation, exchange, solidarity and living.

Making Futures works towards building up alliances and making transversal connections with people across, disciplines, institutions and territories that transcend the boundaries of the academic world and go beyond the borders of Europe. This is unpinned by the belief that social change cannot be limited to a dispersed few but must instead manifest as part of a wider, synergized system. Making Futures is definitely a pluralistic endeavour, there is not one future, but many.

Some Activities

Mobile Workshop Thüringen
March 27th – April 1st, 2019
Thüringen, Germany

Making Futures School
August 30th – September 15th, 2019

Haus der Statistik,
Berlin, Germany

Making Futures Website