DESCRIPTION

The seminar AND WORKSHOP focuses on Rural Resources, that create desirable ways of living, working and producing. Inhabitants of rural regions bring together site-specific knowledge and skills to create prototypes of communities that manifest a deep awareness of the interconnection between the built environment and social networks.
In this seminar we investigate the potential of rural areas through a workshop format, emphasizing the practical role of making. Together with master thatcher we will build a bioregional pavilion, material designer Mina Mahouti will explore traditional lime plaster techniques, and local insulation plaster will be made with biochar. Together we will actively engage with the surrounding environment and its aesthetic, material, and ecological qualities.
The student group lives in each rural location for several days and works together on a common objective. Local experts contribute site-specific knowledge and skills. In parallel, international guests bring in thematic links to a wider ecology of discourse. Both groups are involved in a pedagogy that aims to be non-hierarchical.
In addition to learning craft techniques, the workshops investigate the relationship between the cultural landscape and the built environment, and thus the conditions of contemporary rural society. Local cooperation partners help to ground the project in these specific spatial and social contexts.
Within this program we develop narratives for new patterns of caring through collective experience of the rural condition and its potential for a new ecology of architectural practice.

DATES & LOCATION

May 12 – May 16, 2026 in Gerswalde
 

FRAMEWORK BY

Prof. Niklas Fanelsa, Mina Mahouti, Daniel Schnitterbaum, Marco Weichert