Art, architecture and technology can contribute “to a renewed narrative and vision of Europe”, Commissioner for Innovation, Mariya Gabriel, and the president of Italian Innovation Fund and a member of the New European Bauhaus High Level Roundtable, Francesca Bria, pointed out a joint article presenting the underpinnings of the New European Bauhaus.
Recently, they noted, the Commission announced five ‘lighthouse demonstrator’ projects of the initiative that will deal with topics such as building renovation, circularity, cultural heritage, education, smart cities, urban regeneration, involving citizens in the green transition at the local level.
Gabriel and Bria also announced the launch of the Festival of the New European Bauhaus that will take place in Brussels with side events all across Europe between 9 – 12 June.
“We are confident that art, architecture, and technology can strongly contribute to a renewed narrative and vision of Europe. An inclusive Europe, in harmony with its non- European neighbours and open to the many diverse ideas and cultural influences that have shaped it in the past and that have the potential to shape it further, projecting it into a new green and digital humanism” the two officials said in the article.
Outlining the philosophy of the initiative, the article recalls that after Europe faced two major crises due to the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, “the world finds itself in a geopolitically induced energy crisis and in a raw material volatility” due to more than two years of supply chain disruptions and the rebound from the COVID crisis, while at the same time the deepening impacts of human activity on the Earth’s climate and ecosystems have brought humanity to an existential tipping point.
“It is more important than ever to accelerate the Green Deal transition, making Europe the first digitally enabled, sustainable, climate-neutral continent” they stressed.
The article explains how the Bauhaus movement and school was founded 100 years ago in Weimar, Germany, “as a response to the cataclysm of the First World War, which led to a great upheaval in many different areas, from design, to architecture, to education, and laying the foundations for modernist architecture”.
The paradigm shift brought about by the original Bauhaus concerned “the search for harmony and balance between design and form, according to the ideal ‘form follows function’”.
“With the New European Bauhaus, we want ‘form to follow the planet’, making sure to pave the way towards a new model of innovation in which art, science, technology and ecology go hand in hand” the two explained in the article.
“This is why Commission President Ursula von der Leyen launched the New European Bauhaus, calling it ‘part of our larger vision’, a space for co-creation in which architects, artists, students, engineers, designers work together to ‘combine style with sustainability’, stating that the climate transition needs ‘its own distinctive aesthetic’” they stressed.
The initiative, Gabriel and Bria said, aims to “bring innovation to the market, with new products and services, new business models and new skills”.
“New digital solutions have made our lives more convenient, especially during the COVID pandemic, but have not yet transformed the physical environment where we live, work, and move. What we need now is a new wave of innovation. Innovation should be synonymous with a tangible change of existing economic models centred around biodiversity, sustainability and regenerative approaches based on the interconnection between living beings and their socio-ecological values” they added.
The community build around the initiative is currently developing across Europe through a toolkit of policy instruments, with about €85 million from EU programmes. The two officials also call on Member States to introduce the New European Bauhaus in their cohesion policy programmes and to mobilise investment in their recovery and resilience plans.
The article also refers to one of the first projects that have received awards through the New European Bauhaus, in the context of the need for deeper decarbonisation in all sectors and for transforming outdated business models into more sustainable ones.
This project is “a digital platform based on blockchain technology that rewards users when they opt for zero-emission mobility, instead of using their own private car and quantifies the CO2 emissions not emitted by converting them into tokens, green credits to exchange for goods and services”.
“Platforms like these also show that it is possible to create public value from the responsible use of data, with the intention to launch a New European Bauhaus Data Space” they said.
“The new wave of innovation is currently led by deep tech start-ups that target our deep societal challenges”, which is an indication “that Europe’s industry, working closely with research centres and start-ups, has a central role to play” according to the authors.
“In particular, the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) and the European Innovation Council should ensure that we create a pan European Innovation Ecosystem where selected start-ups and scale-ups are empowered to accelerate their businesses to the next level” they added.
Also, the aim of the NEB Lab, created to help concretely accelerate the program, is “to act as an incubator to connect people and learn from one another’s experiences” they pointed out, recalling also that the initiative is linked with the European Year of Youth 2022.
Source: Cyprus News Agency