The New European Bauhaus – What is it about

The New European Bauhaus wants to make the Green Deal a cultural, human centred and positive, “tangible” experience. It shows the opportunities and hopes and brings the Green Deal to the people by building a new future together.

The New European Bauhaus wants to connect different realities. The COVID crisis has shown that many topics are interlinked and that new thinking comes from breaking silos, just as the Bauhaus movement did one hundred years ago. The New European Bauhaus would like to facilitate the exchange of knowledge between people across Europe and to create an interdisciplinary project.

The New European Bauhaus wants form to follow planet: We want to create a design movement integrating three dimensions: sustainability (including circularity), quality of experience (including aesthetics) and inclusion (including affordability). Showing that creativity is in finding affordable, inclusive and attractive solutions for our climate challenges.

What is the New European Bauhaus?

The New European Bauhaus is a think-do tank. A design lab, accelerator and network at the same time. A creative and interdisciplinary movement, convening a space of encounter to recuperate and revisit sustainable practices from, empower the most inspiring practices of today, and design future ways of living, at the crossroads between art, culture and science.

The New European Bauhaus wants to build a sustainable future through creativity, innovation and imagination. To enable experimental places and spaces for us to re-imagine how to live better together after the pandemic.

The New European Bauhaus is a crossroads project. It connects innovation, creativity and design to citizen’s quality of life in towns and localities. It bridges, connect and blend the green and digital transformations.

The New European Bauhaus is a transformational project. It aims to lead the thinking, inspire behaviours, attract the markets and influence public procurement to make new ways of living possible. The ultimate focus is “beyond buildings” – the project should bring benefit to the whole of society. It will help to revisit Europe’s cultural heritage and shape its future.

The New European Bauhaus is transformational in its delivery. Co-created and delivered in innovative, fresh, inclusive and creative ways.

The New European Bauhaus will unfold in three phases: Design, Delivery and Dissemination. The phases will partly operate in parallel, as individuals and communities interested in the first ideas are most likely to become partners to deliver and scale up the initiative. The New European Bauhaus will engage early, to shape the concept in a large co-creation process. In parallel, the initiative needs to develop a framework of deliveries, to align with the ongoing planning of the Multiannual Financial Framework.

The Design phase

The goal of the design phase is to connect to what is already out there to see where and how the New European Bauhaus can accelerate, concretise and materialise good ideas. The outcome should be a framework including a call for proposals for at least five places where the new Bauhaus concept can be materialised. These pilots should be distributed in different EU Member States.

In this phase, the project will be in active listening mode. Culture and technology are not new concepts for architecture and urban planning: the ground is fertile for a very interesting exchange. The New European Bauhaus will provide special facilitation methods and harvesting tools, to allow each contribution to be readable and to generate ideas and insights that can be shared with everyone else. In addition, a series of semi-structured interviews with the most advanced thinkers and practitioners will lead to a New European Bauhaus high-level roundtable; a compass and sounding board for the initiative.

As one element of the design phase, the European Commission will launch in spring 2021 the first edition of the New European Bauhaus prize that will reward inspiring examples around the key elements of the project. The prizes will be awarded in summer 2021 when the design phase will come to an end.

Delivery phase

The delivery phase will begin by setting up at least five New European Bauhaus pilots. Flanking initiatives identified in the design phase and digital networks and platforms will complement the pilots to structure and spread the movement. A ‘community of practice’ formed by all the participants of the design phase will monitor the five pilots: all the partners involved in the broader initiative should be able to learn and benefit from the first experiments towards good impact.

Dissemination phase

In this phase, the New European Bauhaus will focus on diffusing good ideas and concepts to a broader audience, not only in Europe but also beyond. This will be about networking and sharing knowledge between practitioners on the best available methods, solutions and prototypes. We want to help all frontrunners to replicate their experiences across cities, rural areas and localities and to inspire a new generation of architects and designers. Last but not least, the initiative will support the emergence of lead markets for new ways of living in buildings that are in harmony with the natural environment and the climate.