Project Start NEB Liv­ing Lab: Energy

How can Bavaria secure its sus­tain­able ener­gy sup­ply in the long term using wind pow­er and pho­to­voltaics? The tech­ni­cal pos­si­bil­i­ties and tasks are well known. But how can we work togeth­er to make wind tur­bines and PV sys­tems more pop­u­lar in urban and rur­al areas? There is a lack of cre­ative approach­es, or as SZ jour­nal­ist and archi­tect Ger­hard Matzig once put it: “The ener­gy tran­si­tion must become more aes­thet­ic” (SZ August 4, 2021).

This is why the New Euro­pean Bauhaus (NEB) Liv­ing Lab: Ener­gy has now been launched. In a cross-sec­toral, research-based col­lab­o­ra­tion, it aims to devel­op new ideas for ener­gy gen­er­a­tion in Bavaria that can be approved and to make them vis­i­ble as mod­els. The ener­gy tran­si­tion is not only nego­ti­at­ed here as a tech­ni­cal and eco­nom­ic chal­lenge, but also as a cul­tur­al and aes­thet­ic one. The team’s work is guid­ed by think­ing and work­ing meth­ods from the cul­tur­al and cre­ative indus­tries, such as design think­ing and spec­u­la­tive design, which are firm­ly anchored in the team. Its mem­bers are recruit­ed from the fields of sci­ence & research, the ener­gy indus­try, civ­il soci­ety, admin­is­tra­tion and, for the first time, the cul­tur­al and cre­ative indus­tries (CCI), includ­ing design and architecture.

The NEB Liv­ing Lab, which is fund­ed by the Bavar­i­an Min­istry of Eco­nom­ic Affairs, is curat­ed by Bay­ern Inno­v­a­tiv GmbH and bay­ern design. The lab is embed­ded in the Euro­pean Commission’s New Euro­pean Bauhaus Ini­tia­tive and is part of the work to imple­ment the Euro­pean Green Deal.

The inter­dis­ci­pli­nary lab team includes (in alpha­bet­i­cal order): land­scape archi­tect Daniel Czechows­ki (Planstatt Sen­ner), indus­tri­al design­er Ste­fan Eck­stein (VDID), cir­cu­lar econ­o­my and nature con­ser­va­tion expert Son­ja Eser (Sin­nen­Wan­del), project plan­ner Sabine Müller (Qair), artist Ves­na Petresin and ener­gy sci­en­tist Daniela Wohlschlager (Forschungsstelle für Energiewirtschaft).