The scientific network Impact Research in Architecture and Urban Planning: Interdisciplinary Theories and Methods (German title: Wirkungsforschung in Architektur und Städtebau: Interdisziplinäre Theorien und Methoden (WAS)), funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), has been launched. Over the next three years, the members will devote themselves to working on definitions for specifying the fields of impact of architectural and urban planning as well as the research methods and theories that are to be made productive for this purpose. More about our work can be found here (in German).

Especially in the past 60 years, a fundamental change has taken place in the relationship between humans and nature. Architecture has played a leading role in this. In Germany, the construction and maintenance of buildings causes about 40% of CO2 emissions, 52% of our waste and consumes 90% of the mineral, non-renewable resources in the production of building materials. The immense energy consumption and high CO2 emissions of buildings and non-recyclable construction waste, but also increasing social inequalities and societal cleavages require a fundamental change of mindset in construction and architecture. Following the enlightenment and also the tradition of modernity, we separate in our imagination humans and nature, nature and culture. But this categorical separation seems questionable when we consider the complex implications of humans and nature in times of the Anthropocene. As architects, we make nature with our everyday design decisions. All building activities have impacts locally, on the immediate neighborhood, as well as on the Earth system globally. While in many areas of our daily lives we are aware of our complicated relationships with, for example, the clothing industry in Bangladesh, we are less aware of the interconnectedness of our construction industry for instance in the wake of lime or sand mining. Yet in light of the climate crisis, such awareness is urgently needed in order to be able to take responsibility for our spatial planning activities.

Material Networks is an interdisciplinary research-based teaching project and online archive that playfully, politically, and with a precise fous uses small narratives that are researched according to scientific standards to trace and make visible our complex, mostly invisible socio-ecological entanglements in the everyday life of the things / materials / resources with which we build, and offers impulses for rethinking.

The open access resource provided on the Hamburg Open Online University, or "HOOU", serves as an information medium for students, teachers and practitioners in the field of architecture in particular and all planning disciplines in general - as well as for a broader, ecologically interested public. Due to the variety of the material stories, which give insights into our resource management and are also always telling from the lives of other people and species, the project will additionally offer a multitude of connecting points for a wide range of disciplines and fields of interest.

Project start: February 2022