Bauhaus Briefing - Edition 3
Sent on 18 November 2021
Welcome to the third and final edition of Bauhaus Briefing – our daily round-up of happenings at this week’s Beautiful, sustainable, together: LIFE in the New European Bauhaus conference.
Wednesday’s theme was nature-based solutions – check out some key moments below.
Florika Fink-Hooijer, DG Environment’s Director-General, who herself was raised in a Bauhaus building in Berlin, opened the final day of the conference by highlighting the synergies between LIFE and the New European Bauhaus.
‘LIFE is a frontrunner and for nearly 30 years has funded lots of projects that follow the New European Bauhaus approach. Examples include greening cities, reducing heat island effects, and improving our resilience against flash floods. These may not have been called New European Bauhaus at the time, but today they perfectly match the concept,’ she said.
Asked about bringing the New European Bauhaus concept to life, Xavier Troussard, Head of the European Commission’s New European Bauhaus Unit, said it is critical to ‘move beyond Brussels and work with people on the ground’. He underlined the importance of reaching out to individuals and smaller organisations ‘to get to where we normally do not get.’
Some of the nominees and winners of the first New European Bauhaus prize then took centre stage. Following a short video presenting their projects, they discussed the three conference topics and set out their future ambitions.
The focus then turned to how the movement’s three key values of ‘beautiful, sustainable, together’ relate to nature-based solutions – the backbone of many LIFE and Horizon Europe projects. We learned about projects like LIFE IP Deltanature and INTERLACE that have sustainability at their heart. Yet, these projects are also inclusive as they often bring many groups together to achieve a common goal. The link to beauty was underlined by a Belgian project that transformed barren areas into stunning, multifunctional landscapes.
The last session saw speakers from previous sessions discussing ways to help implement the New European Bauhaus. It was agreed that ‘tiny tears can make an ocean.’ ‘Paying more attention to actionability’ was also considered vital. And having a narrative to hand can help people grasp important issues and act.
CINEA Director Dirk Beckers closed the conference, saying that LIFE and other likeminded projects have a key role to play in transferring key New European Bauhaus principles into concrete actions on the ground, adding that they can also help to make the green transition.
‘Commissioner Sinkevičius said that you are the changemakers that the European Green Deal needs, and you certainly are. Now it’s time to replicate and upscale these initiatives,’ he concluded.
A big thanks to all of you for reading our daily updates and to the many thousands of people that visited us online over the three days.
The LIFE in the New European Bauhaus team
Correction: Edition 2 of Bauhaus Briefing mistakenly cited LIFE HEROTILE in the Energy performance in buildings session. The participating project was in fact LIFE SUPERHERO.
Previous editions
Bauhaus Briefing – Edition 1 – 16/11/2021
Bauhaus Briefing – Edition 2 – 17/11/2021
