Danube School 2022, Ulm
Old Bauhaus – New Bauhaus: How to deal with the common cultural heritage in the Danube region?
- Project status
- Completed
- Time span
- 24.–28.10.2022
- Location
- Ulm, Germany
Since 2014, the DanubeSchoolsSeries is a well-established and respected platform of exchange and debate among political decision makers, academics and students regarding the Danube region. In 2022, the Danube School in Ulm was organized as a cooperation between the European Danube Academy EDA and the HfG Ulm Foundation.
This year, the Danube School reflected the heritage and influence of urbanistic and architectural modernism in the Danube countries after 1945. The participants discussed its protection, preservation and especially potentials for its re-use in the frame of a future-oriented urban development according to the goals of the New European Bauhaus of the EU. They worked on the topic using project examples selected by them.
Lectures were given by Borut Cink, Dr. Arch. Ilinca Păun Constantinescu, Dániel Kovacs, Leona Lynen, Prof. Ute M. Meyer, Márton Orosz and Prof. Dr. René Spitz.
After more than 10 years of vacancy, the Haus der Statistik site in Berlin is being developed for the common good - jointly by civil society and the public sector. In the existing building and through approx. 65,000 m² of new construction, spaces for art, culture, social affairs and education, affordable housing as well as a new city hall for the district of Berlin-Mitte and administrative uses are being created.
Through creative formats of participation, alternative approaches to planning processes will be created, self-organization of users will be empowered through so-called pioneer uses during the planning and construction phase, and the long-term security of the space will be ensured through a public-civic partnership: Civil society actors are directly involved in the management as stakeholders, while the public sector assumes a watchdog function in committees and bodies.
Download presentation here: Haus der Statistik / Danube School Ulm
Shrinking Cities is an international phenomenon (theorized more than a decade ago by German researchers) that affects a large category of cities, generating serious population loss and a corresponding loss of meaning. Indeed urban shrinkage can be about an ending. But the end implied by urban shrinkage is not absolute. Instead, it pertains to the logic of a system where growth and decline coexist and where the volatile margins between them become carriers of an exchange of experience.
Propped by a continuous research, after the exhibition at the National Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharest (MNAC) in 2016 and the bilingual two-volume international publication (DOM publishers, Berlin & Editura MNAC, București) in 2019, Shrinking Cities in Romania by IDEILAGRAM is part of the Fading Borders pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2021, where it addresses these complex and interdisciplinary issues more directly to the architects.
Download presentation here: Shrinking Cities / Danube School Ulm
Post-war architectural heritage faces an immense amount of problems and dangers nowadays. The aging of materials, changes in use, taste and public appreciation and changing expectations regarding building performance are problems that appear in every corner of the world. Some difficulties however appear to be region-specific in Eastern and Central Europe, such as the fundamental traumas in society after the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, and the hunger of Capitalist property development. A certain amount of political discontent is often associated with these buildings. Monument protection thinking and practice are also going through significant changes. While in the first part of my lecture I talk about these challenges, in the second part I try to sketch ways to tackle them. Preserving these architectural values relies in most cases on activist urbanism and its toolset of public protests, national and international media and putting pressure on local politicians. The result in most cases can be what I call a partially preserves old monument, which ultimately looses some of its original meaning. But is there a way to create new monuments from these buildings? I argue that and collecting and telling stories, a different understanding of the values of these edifices, the architectural tools reinterpretation and reuse and sometimes even the appreciation of the ruin-value can and should give us a proper toolkit.
Download presentation here: Protecting Modernism / Danube School Ulm
The story of the first „diasphoric” Bauhaus school and its legacy
The first iteration of the Bauhaus outside of Germany, the Műhely (“Workshop”) was founded in 1928. The school had two later internationally renowned disciples, Victor Vasarely, the father of Op-art, and György Kepes, a pioneering figure of the Art and Technology Movement. Vasarely, in 1976 created his own Foundation in Aix-en-Provence with the goal of recruiting a collaborative team to elaborate the ways how to create an aesthetic city that can serve as a place for optical excitement. György Kepes, on the other hand, represented a similar idea when in 1967 established his Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT by offering a platform for artists to dovetail them with scientists with the aim to come up with concepts to bring back the lost pageantry of nature in the cityscape. Both ventures were embedded in the notion of community thinking, the shared benefits of design, and the idea of teamwork, inheriting the socially-oriented template of the Bauhaus.
Download presentation here: "The Műhely" in Budapest / Danube School Ulm
Further information about Márton Orosz
Design and politics are inseparable. Bauhaus and Ulm School of Design are built on this understanding.
Design is the phenomenon of a specific mode of creation in the modern era.
Bauhaus and HfG Ulm were reactions on the slaughter factories of the First and the Second World War.
The main difference between Bauhaus and HfG Ulm is the approach towards art. At the Bauhaus, art served as a guideline for a better future: Everyday life should be shaped as art because art is peaceful, free, autonomous and universal.
HfG Ulm rejected this idea. Here, reality is seen as dominated by technology. Focusing on aesthetic factors would not be helpful for the development of a peaceful, democratic and free society. HfG Ulm’s radical new concept was about »contributing to the civilization of the forms of life of our technical age«.
Download presentation here: Design und Politik / Danube School Ulm
The New European Bauhaus (NEB) connects the European Green Deal to our daily lives and living spaces by translating it into a tangible, positive experience in which all Europeans can participate and progress together. It calls on all Europeans to imagine and build together a sustainable and inclusive future that is beautiful for our eyes, minds, and souls.
New European Bauhaus inspires a movement to facilitate and steer the transformation of our societies along three inseparable values:
- sustainability, from climate goals to circularity, zero pollution, and biodiversity
- aesthetics, quality of experience and style beyond functionality
- inclusion, from valuing diversity to securing accessibility and affordability
The initiative's approach and implementation is multi-level from global to local, participatory and transdisciplinary.
The presentation reflects the state of play of the New European Bauhaus at the end of October 2022. For the latest news and developments of the initiative please visit NEB’s website.
Download presentation here: New European Bauhaus – from concept to action / Danube School
www.new-european-bauhaus.europa.eu
The New European Bauhaus on the Danube (NEBoD) functions as a think-and-do tank that generates and shares knowledge and activities. It doubly serves as an open communication platform for experiences and ideas as well as a base to exchange competences in the fields of design, art, architecture and culture.
NEBoD interprets and enables the green transition in the Danube region. Like-minded members come from different countries along the Danube and have joined forces in the spirit of the historical Bauhaus and Ulm School of Design: Architecture and Urbanism are tools to responsibly and creatively inform transformation processes in service of the public good. Activities support shared identities and highlight the need to transform spatial structures for post-fossil needs.
Download presentation here: NEBoD / Danube School Ulm
www.urbanes.land