New European Bauhaus: what kind of future do you want to live in?

On 22 and 23 April, the first conference dedicated to the New European Bauhaus initiative will be held by the European Commission, throwing open the space for co-design and collaboration.

The initiative was announced last year as an innovative, participatory dimension to implementing the European Green Deal and borrows from the original Bauhaus School, a radical German art school that was founded in 1919 and became famous for an approach that unified artistic vision with function. The school spawned a movement that travelled far beyond German borders and had a long-lasting and profound impact on art, architecture, graphic design, interior design and industrial design.

Reflecting on the places we inhabit in 2021, and our relationship with natural environments beyond the built space, we know that the climate crisis requires deep and systemic changes to how we live. Either adapting to or mitigating climate change will touch upon everything from how we work and energise our homes, to how we move around and interact within our communities.

It’s time to explore a practical approach to discovering beautiful, sustainable, inclusive and affordable ways of living, and use them to inspire our way forward.

Beautiful, sustainable, together

So, what would the new ideal building be? And to open that question up further, what would beautiful, sustainable and inclusive places look like? What are the feelings, the sensations, but also the practical requirements and the materials we would use? If it was our neighbourhood, how should that look, feel, work? How would we share the space and what would be our new habits? How would we make it truly inclusive?

The New European Bauhaus is an open invitation to make suggestions, join conversations, and shape outcomes.

Introductions can be practical, creative or critical. This is the place where individual contributions can become a shared conversation, or an inspiring and guiding symposium, conference, workshop or street action. If you have already organised a conversation in your own community, this is where you can submit your findings.

By using design principles to embed human needs in beautiful, sustainable, and inclusive forms of living, the project gives citizens the opportunity to design the future they want to live in. And by submitting your ideas, you can shape the official call for proposals, due to be published in the autumn. Anyone can contribute an idea to the New European Bauhaus here and by using either a freeform tool or a document upload tool.

Next week, on April 22 and April 23 there will be a full programme of presentations, dialogues and workshops that explore the possibilities. You can register for the conference here.