Study Rooms 2025: Learning Environments

Fri, 24 October 2025
// Bauhaus Museum Dessau

11 am – 11:15 am
Welcome + Introduction
Regina Bittner, Vera Lauf

11:15 am – 12 pm
Keynote Lecture
Activating Architectural Archives, Writing Environmental Histories
Kim Förster

In his keynote lecture, Kim Förster will discuss institutional work and networks, drawing upon the Architecture and/for the Environment project (2017–18), which he conceived and led at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, particularly the design and collaborative implementation of the research, as well as the activation and critical examination of collections. Building upon the legacy of the CCA, the project extended beyond the traditional scope of architectural histories by integrating environmental perspectives. The initiative, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, emphasized the dialogue between architecture and environmental humanities, addressing themes related to energy, materials, and more-than-human narratives.

12 – 1:30 pm
Roundtable 1
Empathy + Care
Lilo Viehweg (moderation), Valena Ammon, Randi Rojas Díaz, Elena Falomo, Alexandra Liakhavets, Hira Rasool

Finding collective empowerment in intimate crafting histories and unlearning environmental pedagogies, searching for connection in soil, plant and water bodies in post-industrial landscapes beyond toxic wastelands. This panel engages with the topic of empathy and care through the lens of human-more-than human entanglements. In it, empathy and care are highly situated practices and not without ambivalence, negotiations towards more sensitive relationships. In a collective deep reading and listening session this panel will give insides into what it means to stay with the trouble from multiple perspectives.

1:30 – 2:30 pm
Lunch Break

2:30 – 3 pm
Workshop Presentation
Weaving Scales
Iva Rešetar / Bastian Beyer with participants of the COOP Design Research program

Co-Weaving Biofilms is the outcome of an interdisciplinary collaboration between the research fields of architecture and design, microbiology, and materials sciences at the Cluster Matters of Activity. Challenging the energy-intensive and extractive practices of conventional cellulose production, it intertwines scales to construct hybrid textiles between the bacterial and the human. Building on the Co-Weaving Biofilms project, the workshop delved into the question of scales and invited students of the COOP Design Research program to trace the histories of cellulosic materials and to map their scales as deeply relational—considering their extraction and fabrication, and their afterlife across domestic, infrastructural, and environmental contexts.

3 – 4:30 pm
Roundtable 2
Co-Existing /Co-Habitation
Mara Trübenbach (moderation), Jabili Sirineni, Alina Paias, Lily Chishan Wong

The roundtable “Co-habitation/Co-existence” explores how humans imagine, shape, and subjugate nature. From romanticized visions of plants to their domestication and engineering, we question the impulse to control ecology and resources. We will discuss shifting definitions of “nature” and alternative approaches in history, architecture, and curatorial practice, while inviting the audience to join a collective drawing exercise based on images we present, to rethink how we conceive our coexistence with other living beings.

4:30 – 5 pm
Coffee Break

5 – 6:30 pm
Impulse Lecture + Film
Ursula Biemann „Forest Mind“ (2021)
Etienne Turpin (introduction)

Swiss artist Ursula Biemann’s video essays are renowned for their ability to relay shifting territories of overlapping material and ideational complexity. In Forest Mind, the artist takes up questions of mind and cosmology at the intersection of art, science, and spirituality. As with the eponymous book publication, subtitled “On the Interconnection of All Life,” this video essay invites viewer to reimagine the world as a plurality of lifeforms all in constant, indelible interaction. For the event, Biemann’s long-time collaborator Dr. Etienne Turpin will provide a brief introduction to the film, situating it within the broader arc of her cosmological inquiry.

6:30 – 9 pm
Eating Sustainably
Urbane Farm

Sat, 25 October 2025
// Bauhaus Museum Dessau

10 – 10:30 am
Guided Tour through the exhibition
Bauhaus Ecologies
Regina Bittner, Vera Lauf

Although the Bauhaus is now also associated with the destructive consequences of modernism, the avant-garde artists of the 1920s were already thinking about the future of nature, the environment, climate and landscape. In their search for cultural forms of expression for modernity, the Bauhaus artists were inspired by various schools of thought, including biocentrism, natural philosophy, holistic fantasies and organicism. Bauhaus Ecologies shows how ecological considerations were combined with design issues between science and art, technology and design at the Bauhaus.

10:30 – 11 am
Studio Zagreb
Ecologies of Absence: Learning from Fragments
Nikola Bojić, Ivan Skvrce, Marko Tadić (mentors), Helena Birin, Leonarda Budak, Marija Jakupanec, Jura Momčilović, Klara Moslavac, Mihaela Spiegl, Tonka Sušec, Sara Trlek, Majda Vukalović, Nika Zdunić

To work with collections is to confront not only what is present and preserved, but also what is absent and lost. These gaps are not merely deficits; they point to structures of exclusion and (in)visibility that shape cultural memory. They ask whether fragments can become active models for learning, and whether forms such as friendships, memories, and gestures of care can guide us in thinking about ecology, responsibility, and shared futures. Collections are not static repositories, but learning environments – ecologies in which human and non-human, personal and collective, past and present, remain fragmented and incomplete, yet living and entangled. A student research group at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb (ALU) engaged with Otti Berger’s textile fragments, Ivana Tomljenović’s experimental film, and the correspondence of Marie-Luise Betlheim and Lou Scheper, three Bauhaus-related collections from the partner institution, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb (MSU).

11 am – 12:30 pm
Panel Discussion
Collection Ecologies
Catarina Madruga (moderation), Regina Bittner, Vera Lauf, Vesna Meštrić, Cvetka Požar, Maja Vardjan

Nature has long inspired art, design, and technology, while museums are spaces that exist as separated from “nature,”. This panel examines “collection ecologies”, exploring how stored and displayed objects reveal their environmental contexts—through both iconic and everyday items. Guests will discuss how collections can address today’s ecological concerns: Which objects help rethink human–nature relations? How can past collections relate to current climate issues? And how are ecologies and ecological activism represented in exhibitions?

Valena Ammon is an artist and designer dwelling in the fields of ceramics, practice-based research, digital manufacture and material culture. Her works explore the interconnectedness between materials, entities and landscapes. Based in Germany her works have been exhibited in Germany, Italy, Denmark, Switzerland and Taiwan.

Bastian Beyer is an architect and researcher trained at the University of the Arts Berlin with a PhD from the Royal College of Art. His research explores the intersection of microbiology and architectural materiality, with a focus on textiles and sustainable composites that connect critical experimental material design and fabrication principles. He currently works as a postdoc researcher at the Cluster Matters of Activity, HU Berlin.

Regina Bittner, PhD, studied cultural theory and art history at Leipzig University and received her doctorate from the Institute for European Ethnology at the Humboldt Universität Berlin. As head of the Academy of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation she curates and teaches the postgraduate and cross-disciplinary programs on transcultural modernism in design and architecture research. Her research interests combine cultural anthropological approaches in architecture and design studies with questions of decolonization, critical heritage and its mediation in teaching and curatorial practice. Since 2019, she has been an honorary professor at the Institute for European Art History and Archaeologies at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg.

Nikola Bojić, PhD, studied art history and museology at the University of Zagreb and earned a postgraduate degree at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. His works have been presented at the Taipei Biennial, the Venice Biennale, and the Milan Triennale, among others. He has taught at MIT and is an Assistant Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb.

Randi Rojas Díaz is a designer, originally from Costa Rica and currently based in Berlin, whose research and design methods depart from the conviction that design shapes contexts, and as such holds responsibilities and opportunities in its practice. He is a COOP alumni and participant of the Bauhaus Study Rooms in 2024. His primary research reflects on empathy and embraces transdisciplinary perspectives to elaborate on how design can contribute to imagining alternative futures.

Elena Falomo is a design researcher whose practice delves into social and ecological questions through collaborative processes. She is the co-founder of the Living Summer School and she is passionate about alternative pedagogies. Her works have been exhibited in institutions across Europe. In 2024, she participated in the Bauhaus Lab.

Kim Förster is an architectural historian at the University of Manchester, specializing in knowledge and cultural production, environmental, energy, and material history. Former Associate Director of Research at the CCA in Montréal (2016–18), he is author of Building Institution (2024), and editor of Environmental Histories of Architecture (2022). He currently researches, teaches, and exhibits on the topic of cement modernism and cement culture.

Vera Lauf, PhD, is a research associate in the Academy department at the Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau. From 2014 to 2023, she worked as a research curator at the Gallery for Contemporary Art Leipzig. Prior to that, she was a research associate at the Leipzig Academy of Visual Arts, where she also led the program Well Connected – Curatorial Practice in the 21st Century, organized in connection with the Master’s program Cultures of Curating. In her theoretical and practical work, she focuses on questions of education, forms of (re-)presentation, and practices at the intersection of art and design.

Alexandra Liakhavets is an artist, designer, and researcher based in Germany with a background in fashion and textile design. Her research focuses on craft and women’s DIY practices in socio-political contexts and their shifts across historical and economic systems. She also develops a knitting project interweaving academic inquiry with artistic practice.

Catarina Madruga ,PhD, is an expert on the history of scientific collections and the colonial era. Her involvement in international academic and professional networks, her previous work as a curator in Lisbon, her recent open-access special issue on Situated Nature. Field Collecting and Local Knowledge in the Nineteenth Century in the Journal for the History of Knowledge (2022), and the results of her recent work on provenance research as part of the project Colonial Provenances of Nature funded by the Deutsche Zentrum für Kulturgutverluste testify to her expertise and collaborative working methods. She is co-founder of the international and interdisciplinary research collective Collections Ecologies.

Vesna Meštrić studied Art History and Archaeology at the University of Zagreb. She joined the Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, in 2005 as curator of the Richter Collection and later became Head of Collections. She has curated numerous national and international exhibitions and co-authored the European research and exhibition project Bauhaus – Networking Ideas and Practice. In 2023, she was appointed Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb.

Alina Paias is an architect, writer, curator, and researcher interested in the systems behind architecture production. She has worked on the curation, design and production of several exhibitions in the Americas and in Europe. She was one of the curators for the 2024 International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam and is a 2026 recipient of the Talent Development Grant by the Creative Industries Fund in the Netherlands.

Cvetka Požar, PhD in development and theory of design, is an art historian, museum counselor and curator at the MAO. Her main research interests are in the history of design, especially visual communication and contemporary design. She curated the exhibitions The Century of the Poster: Slovenian Poster Design in the 20th Century (2015) and To the Polling Booths! The Poster as a Political Medium in Slovenia 1945-1999 (2000) and authored the accompanying books. She has also co-curated several exhibitions, most recently Castle → concepts, objects, spaces (2024), Jože Brumen: Modernist Designer and Art Connoisseur (2021), The World Inside: Designing Modern Interiors, 1930-Today (2021) and MADE IN: Crafts and Design Narratives (2020).

Hira Rasool is an architect, educator and a researcher from Karachi, Pakistan, currently based in Germany. Through her place and practice-led research, she observes human relationships with land-water temporalities along Sindhu Darya, or the River Indus. Addressing the poetics and politics of critical landscapes, her practice draws from situated knowledge traditions to ground making processes and pedagogies in place.

Iva Rešetar is an architect and interdisciplinary researcher at the Cluster Matters of Activity, HU Berlin. Her research focuses on fluid and marginalised materialities in architecture, histories and aesthetic practices of heat and phase change in relation to climate adaptation, energy transition, and environmental concerns, and fibrous architectures, understood as temporary and more-than-human.

Jabili Sirineni is a poet, architect and researcher from Hyderabad, India. She has a Bachelors Degree in Architecture, a post-graduate Diploma in Liberal Studies and has recently received a Master of Science in Design Research. Her work is an intersection of Architecture, Writing and Ecology(ies). She writes short-fiction about urban ecologies and is interested in the artistic study of insects. In her work as a researcher, she explores the urban as a political space within the framework of Social Reproduction Theory.

Ivan Skvrce explores the relationship between pedagogy and contemporary artistic practices. He is the author of several educational projects and a member of the ABS Group, an art collective engaged in critical and participatory approaches in visual art. He is an Associate Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb.

Marko Tadic studied painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence. His artistic practice spans drawing, installation, and animation. In 2017, he represented Croatia at the 57th Venice Biennale with Tina Gverović. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb and also teaches at NABA in Milan.

Mara Trübenbach, PhD (Oslo, 2024), is a reflective practitioner and educator in architecture, teaching at the Bauhaus-University Weimar. Her artistic research spans design methodologies, performing arts, material interactions, ecological perspectives, and curatorial approaches. She is an Associated Member of the Cluster of Excellence Matters of Activity at the Humboldt-University Berlin.

Etienne Turpin, PhD, is a philosopher and the general editor at K. Verlag in Berlin. He is the co-author of Productions of Nature (Open Humanities Press, forthcoming 2025), co-editor of Decapitated Economies (K. Verlag, 2025), The Work of Wind: Sea (K. Verlag, 2025), The Work of Wind: Land (K. Verlag, 2018), Fantasies of the Library (MIT Press, 2016), Art in the Anthropocene (Open Humanities Press, 2015), Jakarta: Architecture + Adaptation (Universitas Indonesia Press, 2013), and editor of Architecture in the Anthropocene (Open Humanities Press, 2013).

Maja Vardjan is a director and curator at the Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO) in Ljubljana. Her research interests focus on 20th century Slovenian architecture and design and contemporary creative practices. She has co-curated several exhibitions, including Plečnik and Contemporaneity: Glossary; The World Inside: Designing Modern Interiors, 1930-Today; MADE IN: Crafts and Design Narratives; Stanko Kristl: Humanity and Space; Saša J. Mächtig: Systems, Structures, Strategies; and BIO 26: Faraway, so Close, for which she won the ICOM Slovenia award. She has been Commissioner of the Slovenian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale since 2022.

Lilo Viehweg is a researcher, curator and educator with a background in Industrial Design and Cultural Studies. In her works she investigates critical historiographies of material based design processes, the hierarchies of knowledge production and the related socio-political conditions of design.

Lily Chishan Wong is an architect and researcher whose work focuses on the relationships between architecture, urban ecologies, and different forms of ecological understandings. Her practice is devoted to confronting the urgency of ecological justice and the legacy of colonialism through creating spaces, systems, performances, and media. She is currently an assistant professor at the University of Miami.