Learnscapes 2022
Building on Floating University’s various international collaborations with more than thirsty universities since 2018, we now invite teachers with students –or students with teachers– faculties and seminars again to shape and inseminate the Floating Learnscapes over the summer 2022.
Academic institutions and lecturers are invited to relocate with their groups to the site of the Floating Uni to stay and exercise their academic programme here. We would like to see students from all kinds of disciplines exchanging, researching and building sandcastles simultaneously in our inner city offshore campus. We would like to see them reflecting on subjects that matter in an urbanity of continuous transformation. With the seminars, courses and programmes, formats and topics brought along, we hope to expand our learnscapes’ horizon. They might range from critical research, questions of social, architectural, urban and environmental concerns and designs, to the making of a functioning of spaces for learning, communication, commoning and a self-organized civil society.
The Floating Learnscapes will be prepared, hosted and moderated by the Floating e.V., a self-organized association, with practitioners from a wide range of backgrounds. We meet to collaborate, co-create and work towards imaginative futures. We offer a lot in space, inspiration and infrastructure, but no money and no space to stay overnight. We expect academic groups to be very self-organised and independent; to cook for themselves and others, clean their dishes, remove their trash and stay open for collaborations and visitors from other planets.
Programme – Summer 2022
Urban Talks
Dates: 11.05, 18.05, 01.06, 21.06, 29.06.2022
(Dr. Anna Steigemann, Dr. Christian Haid, Dr. Moritz Ahlert, Prof. Markus Bader)
The urban talk series at Floating University is a joint public lecture and discussion event organized by Habitat Unit/TU Berlin with the Design Studio “Safer City, Safer Housing?” (Dr. Anna Steigemann/Dr. Christian Haid) and the BA Thesis Seminar “Collective Housing at Berlin’s City Borders” (Dr. Moritz Ahlert) with UdK studio raumproduktion’s seminar “Talking about collectivities and inclusion in housing” (Prof. Markus Bader)
The lecture series adresses different aspects of collective and alternative housing for marginalized groups, such as for refugees, the queer community or for the urban poor, asking what solidary and urban commons models, practices, strategies, approaches, and spaces can be understood as possible catalysts for a larger urban and societal transformation towards a just city.
11.05.22 // 18.00h // Queer and Feminist Housing: Nina Fraeser (TUB/HCU), Rat und Tat Berlin, mollies Wagenburg
18.05.22 // 18.00h // Collective Housing: Angelika Drescher (Bauhaus der Erde/Edith Maryon Stiftung), Lebensort Vielfalt/Schwulenberatung, Anna Heilgemeier (TUB/Mietshäusersyndikat)
01.06.22 // 18.00h // with Antje Buchholz (BAR architects)
21.06.22 // 19.00h // collective practice / collective housing: Cristina Gamboa (lacol – LaBorda) -> this lecture takes place in UdK, hardenbergstr 33, room 310
29.06.22 // 18.00h // with Jos Boys
Berlin University of the Arts, Faculty of Design, Art and Media, Experimental Film / Media Art
The woman who flew into space from her apartment
Summer semester 2022
Vanina Saracino and Prof. Nina Fischer
The woman who flew into space from her apartment seminar will unfold as a nonexhaustive survey offemale perspectives on science fiction in literature,cinema, and visual arts, attempting to highlight the unique narratives of empowerment—feminist, decolonial, and environmental—that have been too often overlooked, and that thrive outside the genre stereotype of intergalactic wars and narratives of scarcity or escapism. Our convenings will take place around speculative fabulations that breed far from the dominant narratives, particularly stressing women’s contribution to the genre across different eras and artistic forms of expression, unveiling SF’s potential to illustrate and understand the present, to create a vocabulary of resistance and a visual culture against discrimination and colonial power, activating the narratives toward a more just future for all critters on Terra and beyond. The title of the seminar is a word pun on Ilya Kabakov’s iconic installation The man who flew into space from his apartment (1984).
current situation – UdK Berlin
(c) Valentina Berthelon
(c) Valentina Berthelon
Berlin University of the Arts, Building Planning and Design
studio raumproduktion 22: architectures of Inclusion
Summer semester 2022, Tuesdays
Prof. Markus Bader
How can architectures become more inclusive? How can a defined spatial configuration made of long lasting materials offer qualities for diversity, simultaneity and co-existence? How can architecture be more open for many that are not part of the more and more exclusive ways of spatial production? How can we act as spatial practitioners, as architects?
In this project we continue our inverstigation into a site in Friedrichshain in collaboration with lokalbau. develop a deeper understanding of urban transformation processes and how to place ourselves within those as spatial practitioners. We do this by analysing, discussing, intervening, designing, proposing, testing, strategizing, presenting, reflecting.
TU Berlin, Chair of International Urbanism and Design, Habitat Unit
Safe(r) City? Safe(r) Housing?
Solidary Practices and Infrastructures for Queer-Feminist Housing in Berlin
Summer Semester 2022, Thursdays
Dr. Christian Haid, Dr. Anna Steigemann, Prof. Dr. Elke Beyer, Prof. Anke Hagemann
In times of crisis, many actors call for solidarity. However, ‘solidarity’ often only works as an empty signifier. At the same time, the pandemic and the war reveal the societal relevance of solidarity, particularly in the face of the social/housing question, social and political challenges, such as the precarization of work, racist and/or queer-/transphobic discrimination, social exclusion processes, and environmental pollution. In this context, this studio asks which solidary practices can be understood as possible catalysts of a larger societal, spatial and urban transformation with a focus on housing for marginalized queer-feminist social groups?
Safe(r) City? Safe(r) Housing? – TU Berlin
RISEBA University Riga, RTU Riga and Hochschule Wismar
DesignBuild Workshop ‘Riga Floating Bridge’
17.-20. May 2022
Susanne Brorson (Riseba Riga / Hochschule Wismar), Dainis Smits (Riseba Riga), Egons Berzins (RTU Riga), Maris Bardins (Riseba Riga), Mathias Klöpfel (TU Dortmund)
RISEBA Faculty of Architecture and Design and RTU Faculty of Architecture are situated on either side of the canal Zunda in Riga with no physical connection in place. The aim of this self-build project is to create a link between the two universities with architecture students from Latvia and Germany. The task of the Part1/Design Workshop at Floating University was to come up with ideas and design proposals for this new connection and place of meeting. Part 2/The implementation workshop will take place in Summer’22 with students in Riga.
The new ‚Floating Bridge‘ is aimed at strengthening the cooperation between the two faculties of architecture, not only through cultural events, but to be initiated through this unique workshop and teaching format prepared for this project. This self-build project will raise awareness of climate change and the growing importance of floating architecture (aqua-tecture), and will be a very valuable experience for students, learning from concept to implementation in real conditions using sustainable and recycled materials. The participating students from Latvia and Germany will image, draw and create this new connection, this new place, “to build a new town”.
Funded by STO Foundation
HGB-Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig // Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig
Fachgebiet Fotografie, Klasse für Fotografie und Medien // Klasse Klasse
3.–6. May 2022
Ines Schaber, Sophia Kesting, Ronny Aviram, Nicole Burnett, Tobias Fabek, Francesco Fogler, Henry Giggenbach, Nea Gumprecht, Philip Hagen, Inka Hilsenbek, Eunjung Hwang, Noah Müller, Laura Wichmann
Our themes in the Floating University touched on Codes of Conducts in learning environments and in photography:
We asked ourselves questions, read and discussed: How do we work together? Do we need rules? Are those rules already there or do we need to formulate and negotiate them? Does the space in which we are in shape our relations? What are the protagonists in photography and how can we understand and negotiate their roles?
(c) KlasseKlasse
Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart (ABK Stuttgart), Bildende Kunst, Intermediales Gestalten
10.-15. Oktober 2022
Prof. Antonia Low
(c) Antonia Low
(c) Antonia Low
(c) Antonia Low
