The New European Bauhaus initiative connects the European Green Deal to our living spaces. It calls on all Europeans to imagine and build together a sustainable and inclusive future that is beautiful for our eyes, minds, and souls.
The New European Bauhaus is a creative and interdisciplinary movement in the making, and you can be part of it!
- It’s a platform for experimentation and connection, fostering collaboration across thinkers and doers who want to design our future ways of living together.
- It’s a bridge between the world of science and technology and the world of art and culture.
- It’s an invitation to change perspective and to look at our green and digital challenges as opportunities to transform our lives for the better.
- It’s a fresh approach to finding innovative solutions to complex societal problems together through co-creation. The initiative aims to shape our thinking, behaviours, and markets around new ways of living and building, including by influencing public procurement.
The New European Bauhaus will:
- Bring citizens, experts, businesses, and Institutions together and facilitate conversations about making tomorrow’s living spaces more affordable and accessible.
- Mobilise designers, architects, engineers, scientists, students, and creative minds across disciplines to reimagine sustainable living in Europe and beyond.
- Strive to improve the quality of our living experience. It will highlight the value of simplicity, functionality, and circularity of materials without compromising the need for comfort and attractiveness in our daily lives.
- Provide financial support to innovative ideas and products through ad-hoc calls for proposals and through coordinated programs included in the Multi-Annual Financial Framework.
A two-page note containing all the key features of this initiative
What are the next concrete steps?
The New European Bauhaus unfolds in three phases: Co-design, Delivery and Dissemination.
The phases 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 engages early through open conversations, 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 Multi-annual Financial Framework.
Co-design
From October 2020 to Summer 2021
In this phase we start shaping the movement by gathering and connecting what we all consider concrete contemporary examples that showcase principles of the New European Bauhaus. The most inspiring contributions will help all interested people to organise, trigger and participate to debates. An engagement toolkit is available to inspire the conversations and structure the collection of emerging ideas and insights.
A high-level round table with distinguished thinkers and practitioners, established through a series of semi-structured interviews, will serve as a sounding board for ideas and as community ambassadors. Drawing on the examples collected and on the conversations they generated, it will become clear how the New European Bauhaus initiative can boost, scale-up, and support the generation of beautiful, sustainable and inclusive places.
The outcome of the co-design phase will be a support framework based on EU programs, including a call for proposals for pilots in different EU Member States where the new Bauhaus concept will come to life.
Special prizes will be awarded in Summer 2021 to excellent contemporary examples that are in their own way already combining sustainability, quality of experience and inclusion, selected among the examples collected and reviewed/integrated by the enlarged community.
- ConceptDefine the concept and the engagement structure
- How do we ensure the widest participation? How can we include different communities and cultures?
- How can we help the communities we interact with to make sense of the contributions?
- What are the ecosystems we build on?
- When is the end result a success?
- What kind of relevant instruments are there?
- What kind of delivery options could be considered?
- Engage & HarvestEngage & Harvest
- How do high quality, sustainable, inclusive, affordable, translate in our communities?
- What are possible gaps?
- What are the themes that emerge?
- What are the good intervention points?
- IdeateIdeate
- What challenges and needs could drive the calls for proposals?
- How do we measure change?
- How do we empower the change that is most beneficial?
Delivery
From September 2021 onward
This phase will start with the setup and implementation of New European Bauhaus pilots, supported by specific calls for proposals.They will be closely followed and monitored in a 'community of practice' mode, to share the lessons learned from these first experiments.
The focus of the dissemination phase will then be on diffusing good ideas, across Europe and beyond. This will be about networking and knowledge sharing, to identify open, replicable methods, solutions and prototypes, and make them available to cities, localities, architects and designers. It will be key to engage with citizens, businesses, academia, and to reinforce urban institutional capacities.
Flanking initiatives and additional policy instruments beyond the call for proposal will bring further structure to the movement and spread it through digital networks and engagement platforms.
Dissemination
From January 2023 onward
In the third phase, the focus will be on amplifying the ideas and actions that emerged and reaching a broader audience in Europe and beyond.
It will be a lot about networking and systematically sharing knowledge between participants and practitioners - identifying the best methods, solutions, and prototypes, and making them available for cities, localities, architects, and designers. Keeping the conversations open and connecting participants with existing networks will be essential.
Finally, the New European Bauhaus will support the emergence of lead markets for beautiful, sustainable, inclusive ways of living.