#FLOATING FOUNDATION DIAGRAM SERIES#
An innovative water filtration system, designed by artist-in-residence Katherine Bell, used a wheel to draw the ditch water through a series of interconnected bathtubs containing biological filters such as sand-biofilm, mushroom mycelium, and zebra mussels. In these cases, Raumlabor has taken its playful and process-focused approach to architecture and urban planning to broaden the often-rigid or exclusionary nature of education.Įlsewhere, a modular kitchen was designed by architecture students and other participants of a workshop on the socio-spatial history of the kitchen.
This was the Floating University, the brainchild of Foerster-Baldenius and Raumlabor, and the locus of a flurry of events-architectural, educational, and otherwise-that hopped aboard the floating structure.įunded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation as part of its ongoing Bauhaus centenary celebrations, the university was initiated by Raumlabor as a continuation and expansion on its previous education experiments such as the Urban School Ruhr, Hotel Shabbyshabby, and Making Futures at the recent Istanbul Design Biennial. It was part-pirate ship and part-Princeton part-Archigram and part-Burning Man. That is, until this summer.įrom April through September, the basin was occupied by a peculiar, offshore structure-a constellation of scaffolded volumes and floating platforms with inflatable rooftops and a large wheel.
“We knew it was kind of a secret spot in the center of the city that nobody had on the map,” explains Benjamin Foerster-Baldenius of Raumlabor Architects.