The New Bauhaus movement will need to fundamentally transform our world, establishing new relationships between tangible assets, intangible assets, craft, automation and civic engagement economies. The transformation we face requires a New Bauhaus economy. This first working version of the paper draws upon our team’s preliminary research and interaction with relevant European actors. It is a collaborative and constructive contribution to the New European Bauhaus movement. It will be further developed over the course of the next twelve months with a series of in-person and online engagements. A final version of the paper will be launched at the New European Bauhaus Festival in Brussels in April 2024.
Published July 7, 2023
The need for fundamental transformation at speed and scale
The realisation of the scale and severity of the polycrisis 1 is forcing us to systematically re-evaluate the speed and scale of the transition facing our built environment.
The original Bauhaus movement drove the industrial transformation of design and manufacturing in the twentieth century. We propose that the New Bauhaus movement will need to fundamentally transform our world, establishing new relationships between tangible assets, intangible assets, craft, automation and civic engagement economies.
The transition facing our cities and bioregions is substantive, structural and systemic. It is likely to change how and what we account for; how we interact with and use spaces; how we live and work; and how we design our built environment.
The transformation we face requires a New Bauhaus economy.
Apart from design and creativity, our new reality could require new ethics, governance, institutions, accounting regimes, regenerative investments, smart services and systems. A New European Bauhaus Economy explores what is emerging at the intersection of the material and immaterial, highlighting how these new value flows can support the shift towards a regenerative future for our built environment.
Building capacity for inter-sectoral innovation
Our work over the next twelve months seeks to build shared comprehension amongst leading European actors who are driving the systemic transition of Europe’s built environment. This extends across both public and private sectors, aiming to establish a shared understanding of the economic foundations of a New Bauhaus for the twenty-first century.
Together, we seek to map out the new landscape of constraints and abundances that will shape our new economy. We will explore how collective action can drive the transition at the necessary scale and speed; how we can collectively transform our cities and bioregions; and how we can design our future together.
We aim to identify and outline the capacity needed for innovation across sectors, encompassing legislation, finance, civic structures, engagement, education, innovation, energy, resource governance, our relation to nature, land and biodiversity. We will explore how new alliances, scaling from cities to national organisations to transnational partnerships, can drive an agile, cross-sectoral transition of Europe’s built environment.
This paper seeks to open spaces for the necessary cross-sectoral dialogues. How can we act at the scale and speed required? How can we recast our everyday world in a systematic and agile way? We welcome your criticism and verification of our analysis and projections.
Developing a collaborative contribution to the New Bauhaus movement
Through conversation, we aim to explore how to leverage our collective force to transform our cities and design our future. We begin at the UIA World Congress of Architects with a panel discussion in July 2023.
This will be followed by the Copenhagen Roundtable in Autumn 2023. A series of conversations, debates and interviews will follow over the twelve months of the project, shaping the development of this paper.
A final version of the paper will be launched at the New European Bauhaus Festival in Brussels in April 2024.
Click on the graphic below to open the invitation paper
This paper has been developed by Dark Matter Labs as part of the New European Bauhaus lighthouse project, Desire – an Irresistible Circular Society. The project is funded by the European Union.
