UNIVERSITY CONFERENCE: Workshop & Symposium

The intensive worldwide discussion about the development of the working environment has inspired us to organize the workshop “Future Working Spaces 2050” as a part of the Scientific Year 2018 “working environment of the future” announced by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF). A 5-day workshop in Detmold will explore and discuss scenarios, visions and concepts for office buildings, cities and urban development for the year 2050 comparing Mumbai/India (18 million people), Lagos/Nigeria (10 million ppl.), Bogota/Colombia (8 million ppl.), Berlin/Germany (4 million ppl.) and OWL/Germany (2 million ppl.).

The year 2050 stands symbolically as a goal in the near future that makes it conceivable to create, imagine, and predict future scenarios from today’s forecasts. This will pave the way to building and creating viable visions for the future, which though they cannot be verified given the present state of science, can at least be argued. The workshop takes place from 24. – 28.09.2018 and is organized in cooperation between Hochschule Ostwestfalen-Lippe (HS-OWL) in Detmold, Busch-Jaeger Elektro GmbH and Schüco International KG in Bielefeld.

About 100 master students from different planning disciplines will discuss the global challenges facing working places, energy and sustainability in interdisciplinary groups and then present the results with design sketches and examples at the end of the workshop. The workshop focuses on working spaces, which is equally relevant for urban planners, landscape architects, architects, interior designers and engineers as the nucleus for urban development and socio-economic questions. Five unique case studies representing present working places in 2018 will be the starting point for the development of new concepts.

The best teams can furthermore present their ideas at the Schüco Symposium 2018 on the „Future of Work in the Digital Era“ on November 22 and 23, 2018 in Bielefeld, Germany.