Inventive practices such as architecture or design have the agency of shaping the future and the potential of improving the conditions of life for everyone and everything. We could say: an invention a day keeps the doctor away.

To speak of architecture as a practice does not imply the requirement of having to build one building after the other, to overbuild so to speak. It is rather, that architecture and design in the end are attitudes, ways of approaching the day with a certain kind of spirit of looking at things and of reacting on events and circumstances.

In an increasingly challenging environment, where environmental and other crises at an ever-increasing pace lead to social crises, design thinking combined with an openness to knowledge are some of the most important tools, which enable us to react to what happens around us. When conditions change in a dramatic way continuously, very little suggests that we can stay immobile.

Confronted with the climate crisis and other challenges we face, architects and engineers have a particular responsibility towards society. The resources we dedicate to providing the infrastructures of our daily lives must be invested thoughtfully. To build has an enormous cost, financially, regarding the resources and energy we consume, and so on. If we intervene, we must make it count.

For architects, engineers and designers this results in a continuous need for updating their knowledge, for training. For everyone else learning about architecture and design is an occasion for growth. What you learn here can help you somewhere else.

Places such as SOARC - The Society For Architecture or Stiftung Baukultur Thüringen have therefore a particular role today, not only for specialists, but for everyone. They are an opportunity for getting in contact with architecture, design and engineering, for experiencing their potential, for increasing your knowledge on new areas as well as for updating what you already knew, but might have forgotten or you would like to update.

Out of this arises the necessity of interpreting these institutions as new kind of spaces for the transmission of knowledge, where continuously new formats and situations of learning are created, for professionals and amateurs of all ages.

The cultural programmes by SOARC with their different formats are one example for this. The activities of Stiftung Baukultur Thüringen are another example. Starting in 2020 the team of Stiftung Baukultur began with the conception of a new programme for lifelong learning and training. This initiative was part of the project ‘Visionäre der Baukultur’. Different formats of discussing, learning, experiencing, communicating and initiating were developed, both in physical as well as digital form. In 2021 the team launched a new digital platform, which makes selected materials and contents generated through its different projects available worldwide, 24 hours and to everyone.