“The New European Bauhaus offers an unprecedented opportunity to redefine the ‘new normal’ in the context of sustainability, inclusivity, and aesthetics,” Dr Sandra Piesik wrote earlier this year. And today the European Commission set out plans for taking forward this opportunity.
Billed as the ‘cultural and creative dimension to the European Green Deal’, the New European Bauhaus is on a mission to deliver the ‘EU’s ambition of creating beautiful, sustainable, and inclusive places, products and ways of living’. These new lifestyles, where it is all about style and sustainability, are designed to trigger a cultural shift that will accelerate the green transition in sectors including construction, textiles, furniture, and fashion. Which in turn will give citizens access to goods that are ‘circular and less carbon intensive, that support the regeneration of nature and protect biodiversity’.
The initiative will invest €85 million in projects over the next 12 months that can facilitate transformation across these sectors. And a New European Bauhaus Lab, labelled a a ‘think and do tank’, will be established for the co-creation, prototyping and testing of new tools and solutions. At its core the Lab will embody the collaborative spirit of the movement, by bringing people together from ‘society, industry and politics’.
The New European Bauhaus aims at creating a new lifestyle that matches sustainability with good design.
Ursula von der Leyen
Today’s plans were developed through a co-design phase that launched in January to ‘identify aesthetical, sustainable and inclusive solutions for living spaces’. It received 2000 contributions from Europe and beyond.
“The New European Bauhaus moves from co-design to the delivery of transformation! Working together to: improve living spaces; foster innovation; change mindsets & ways of working together,” Mariya Gabriel, European Commissioner for Innovation, tweeted today.
This is a design revolution that is seeking to make life better for people and planet by harnessing the creative soul of humanity.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said: “The New European Bauhaus combines the big vision of the European Green Deal with tangible change on the ground. Change that improves our daily life and that people can touch and feel – in buildings, in public spaces, but also in fashion or furniture. The New European Bauhaus aims at creating a new lifestyle that matches sustainability with good design, that needs less carbon and that is inclusive and affordable for all.”
Dr Piesik, an award-winning architect and expert in adaptation of traditional knowledge, and urban-rural dynamics, wrote more about the history of the Bauhaus movement in her article for Innovators Magazine.
On where it goes next, Dr Piesik added: “[The New Bauhaus] needs to reconcile the relationship with nature at the scale of the individual, and as a part of society as a whole. It could be a perfect platform to re-define the spatial and aesthetic dimension of urban and rural dynamics.”
Find out more about the New European Bauhaus.
