Envisioning the future

In 2020 the next development step of Stiftung Baukultur Thüringen started with the groundbreaking new programme ‘Visionaries of architecture / Visionäre der Baukultur’. It was the continuation and culmination of the successful restart, which had taken place in 2016. Since then, a sequence of intensive projects, which were conceived, proposed and carried out by the team of the foundation at an exceptional level had defined the work of the foundation, but the time had come to give continuity to this process.

The title ‘Visionäre der Baukultur’ says it all.

The programme is based on the programmatic principles of the foundation: visionary, popular, interdisciplinary. It consists of the development of a fundamental programme of curatorial and educational formats and projects, in a continuous activity of events and learning-activities, which supports and flank the larger projects of the foundation.

Things don't stay the way they are.

The aim is to deal with the latest regional, national and international developments regarding the challenges of our time and to initiate an exchange of knowledge inside Thuringia, between Thuringia and the World and vice versa. But the focus in developing this programme goes beyond the content and includes the form in which this content travels too. With other words ‘Visionäre der Baukultur’ is a place, where the team of the foundation continuously develops and enhances new kinds of media infrastructures, which are able to convey information, establish relations between information, people and places as well as to create new ways of learning.

In the first two years the programme was the laboratory from which projects such as ‘Woodland’ originated, where important new sections of its digital platform were conceived, such as ‘Netzwerk der Baukultur’ or the new digital learning platform, the latter a first of its kind.

Everyone has the power to vision.

Through the different initiatives of ‘Visionäre der Baukultur’, the foundation wants to make direct contact with the largest possible cross-section of the citizenship in order to discuss, learn and experience together possible answers to the challenges of our time. The aim is to experience, convey as well as initiate together possible positive answers.

Everyday life is a moment for new ideas.

The programme foresees both projects initiated by the foundation as well as projects initiated by the citizenship or by partners. In both cases the foundation contributes its fundamental characteristic, of being a place, where people and institution meet and exchange.

The world is not finished.

Topics relevant to Thuringia, especially in connection with the ecological imperative and the digital revolution, are put to the test using innovative formats. Different formats are combined, formats of discourse (lectures, conversations and theoretical seminars) with forms of experimentation (workshops and courses) and formats of communication (exhibitions, installations and publications).

Network of Visionaries

The different projects and formats of the programme always have a strong cooperative orientation, with other words they are conceived in such a way as to initiate the most intense exchange possible between places and disciplines. As a consequence, they gradually allow, one project after the other, to establish, maintain and extend a network of initiatives and partners, at regional, national and international level, which participate in the advancement of the culture of architecture and the quality of everyday life.