Energy Avantgarde Anhalt

This project is part of preparations in the planning region to bring about a regional energy turnaround with regional added value and a strengthening of socio-cultural identity. This constitutes a decisive step towards an actual physical adjustment in the regional load profile and towards generating energy from regional renewable sources. In the real-life laboratory to be set up, scientific-technical, economic, and social prerequisites for this will be assessed and created, and stakeholders found to realise the project goals. The project was initiated by the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, because there is a research and design interest in spatial change as part of the implementation of a post-fossil energy system. The challenge this presents can be expressed in the question of whether an impulse coming from Bauhaus concerning the design of the necessary transformation of a production system in society and the living environment in which this system exists (spatial design, urban design, architecture, industrial manufacture, everyday objects of use) can once again succeed. In the course of the project, more concrete interests came to the forefront, namely, the design of the regional communication processes. The regional energy turnaround is a process that can only succeed if it is done in a participatory, democratic way as a joint action of a region. Designing the communication necessary for this is a challenge that the Foundation has taken on. The project has set in motion a process of post-fossil regional development, and the course this takes must be examined and designed in a trans-disciplinary, experimental manner. The Foundation possesses social scientific and design expertise that it contributes to the process experimentally and supportively. The development towards a post-fossil energy supply implies significant changes to the ways of production and of living and, as a consequence of this, to design. The Foundation is interested in all issues pertaining to the spatial, product or digital (interface) designs.

This project was presented as part of the 2015 Baukultur Workshops in Regensburg.