BoSS

Presented as a manifesto in 2020, the Bauhaus of the Seas was first devised as a situated vision that responded to the New European Bauhaus challenge posed by the European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, in September 2020.

The Bauhaus of the Seas Sails consortium partners foster communities to engage in an environmentally sustainable, socially fair and aesthetically appealing transition by supporting mission-oriented demonstrator pilots projects. These pilots start from an intergenerational, intercultural, and interspecies co-design process, which integrates the diverse voices and interests of the communities (including non-humans) and the underlying aquatic ecosystem.

Each consortium partner adopts a drop typology to showcase how a co-design process with architecture, design, sustainability, ecology and culture at its core can deliver highly innovative, concrete activities and experiments that address environmental and societal challenges. Drops are focused and localised initiatives developed at the territorial level, which aim to generate a ripple effect. Under the drop, ripple, wave metaphor, this effect extends from the demonstrator pilot level to the city, region, national and continental levels, thus demonstrating how each pilot is scaled and replicated across time and space.

Officially launched in Lisbon at the start of 2023, the Bauhaus of the Seas Sails consortium encompasses 18 academic, cultural and territorial partners located in 7 cities and regions across 4 aquatic ecosystems. The partners in the Dutch Delta address several of the project’s 7 drop typologies of demonstrator pilots.