Follow the concrete path through the trees or step down the scaffolding staircase that brings you two stories below street level, and the Learnscapes of the Floating unfold in front of you. Learnscapes is what we entitle the floating landscape of knowledge production, of knowing and being and processes of un-, re-, and co-learning, of working and thinking collectively within the site of the rainwater retention basin in Berlin Kreuzberg. 

Here we learn from our presence inside an engineered infrastructure, where toxic rainwater, mud, algae, reeds, frogs, birds and foxes create a unique ecosystem. Here we encourage non-disciplinary learning formats and radical, experimental approaches in dialogue with the complexity of our surroundings. Floating University offers a broad variety of public programs exploring the urban territory including questions of climate responsibility, urban practice and spatial literacy as well as creating a base on which we can learn how to embrace, engage with and navigate the complex entanglements of urbanity, while imagining and creating different forms of living together as humans and with more than human entities. 

In 2021, the Floating Learnscapes programme extends these ongoings through two extra academic perspectives: Free Radicals and Academic Beach Resort.

In 2022 collaborations continue and build up on the existing network of academic partners engaged with the Floating University. In September, the Learnpeaks symposium gathered all collaborators from the past years to discuss topics of extra-ordinary learning environments. 

2023 was all about unsealing. How can we imagine the transformation of this temporary utopia in a concrete basin into a hybrid public infrastructure – a rainwater infiltration landscape as a civic space for artistic and learning practices? Unsealing Floating was an open invitation to all visiting student groups to engage with the topic of unsealing and support Floating University in becoming an agent of transformation in the process of unsealing and redesigning the basin. 

In this year we are happy to explore the swampscapes of the Floating and reawaken the Free Radicals! 

Learnscapes is Jeanne Astrup-Chauvaux, Markus Bader, Sarah Bovelett, Benjamin Foerster-Baldenius, Julia Klink, Kristin Laz, Antonia Schlaich, Lisa van Hayden and Raul Walch.