Open Call for Bauhaus Earth fellowships

The project-based Bauhaus Earth Fellowship Program (BE-FELLOW) funds selected, exceptionally talented, emerging protagonists in the Bauwende*. The Program objective is to identify new, powerful architectural languages for a sustainable built environment and to support this transformation via architectural quality and design expression. The Program is designed to provide Fellows with the financial freedom and the intellectual and professional environment to pursue their promising experimental ideas and new design approaches in a focused way. Fellowship projects challenge existing building codes and conventions in the construction sector through design and building practice. Through collaborative practice, the fellowship projects bring together emerging actors, experts, students, and local stakeholders. They aim to produce new knowledge on local, biobased, and circular building, bridging the gap between institutional research and building practice to contribute to the development of a powerful aesthetic for a sustainable architecture of the future.

BE-FELLOW is a collaboration between Bauhaus Earth and Experimental, the non-profit organization founded by Prof. Regine Leibinger. Since 1993, together with Frank Barkow, she has run the Berlin architectural studio Barkow Leibinger. She teaches at German and international universities and looks to develop Experimental into a framework for practice-based experimental and research work, which often has too little space under the constraints of everyday work.

Fellows And Projects

BE-FELLOW welcomes a broad spectrum of emerging international practitioners in the fields of architecture, design and engineering, art, as well as to interdisciplinary constellations of architectural production. Fellows have proven a specific relevant individual expertise.

Fellowship projects are framed by clear research questions and typically target the production of architectural artifacts of manageable scale that serve as tangible and measurable demonstrations of new ways of building. They should aim for longevity and to be integrated in a real-world, social context.

Projects are open-ended and designed for a duration of 3 to 12 months. They are developed and implemented in close collaboration between the Fellows and BE-FELLOW team and further project-specific partners in an open and shared research environment. We encourage Fellows to spend as much time as possible in Berlin and in the LAB and office space at Marienpark. The Fellows’ presence in Berlin and Brandenburg is linked to exhibitions, lectures, symposia, and debates.

Funding & Support

Fellows receive financial support for the implementation of the project on the basis of their project specific calculation included in the application form (approx. 4.000€/month, see application form for more details). Matthias Ballestrem and Alexine Sammut –the BE-FELLOW team – support the project through content-related collaboration, as well as organizational support. For Fellows, Bauhaus Earth becomes an interdisciplinary learning environment and platform for communal learning outside the formal educational system. In Berlin, Fellows have free access to the LAB and office space at Marienpark, which includes a workshop with technical support. Drawing on the specific focus of fellow projects, we organize knowledge exchanges with Bauhaus Earth’s ongoing projects and our growing network.

Fellowship project development and results will be published on Bauhaus Earth’s media channels. Fellows’ presence in Berlin will be combined with lectures, debates, and exhibitions. BE-FELLOW supports fruitful and long-term networks and relationships with our fellows.

Our third open call is out now! Apply between May 15^th and July 1^st, 2024.***