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News article15 November 2021Directorate-General for Environment

Beautiful, sustainable, together: LIFE in the New European Bauhaus

From 15 – 17 November, the EU LIFE programme holds a three-day hybrid conference showing how it can contribute to the New European Bauhaus initiative. Commissioner for the Environment, Oceans and Fisheries Virginijus Sinkevičijus opened the conference, inviting stakeholders to discover how style and sustainability can make the perfect match. Tomorrow, Maryia Gabriel, Commissioner for Innovation, Research Culture, Education and Youth, is also participating and delivering a speech during the conference, focusing on how to achieve transformation in specific places.

Commissioner Gabriel said:

The New European Bauhaus aims to build a bridge between the world of science and technology and the world of art and culture. The New European Bauhaus tackles issues that cannot be adequately addressed by a single instrument. This is why events as the one today are so important. Exchanging knowledge, learnings and good practices across disciplines, and also across EU policies and programmes, is key to the success of the New European Bauhaus.

Commissioner Sinkevičius said:

The transformation of our societies and economies needed to achieve a carbon-neutral future and the vision of living within the boundaries of our planet by 2050 is foremost an exercise of imagination, followed by determined action. The New European Bauhaus supports this collective effort to build a future that is sustainable, inclusive and beautiful. This conference is a chance to inspire and to get inspired. I invite all the participants to become the change makers the European Green Deal needs.

The New European Bauhaus encompasses a multidisciplinary approach to the challenge of sustainable and inclusive living. The conference will showcase projects financed through LIFE and Horizon 2020 which are good examples of already deployed New European Bauhaus’ style and principles. They are to provide inspiration for new projects to support a wider diffusion of the New European Bauhaus values: sustainability, inclusion and aesthetics. Featured projects combine several of the following features:

  • technological ideas that embrace principles of circular economy
  • projects that preserve ecosystems and promote nature-based solutions
  • ideas that bring sustainability principles in building design including the circularity principles into practice, and
  • activities that aim at changing behaviour at all levels of society.

The abovementioned EU programmes will support the New European Bauhaus initiative to make the European Green Deal a cultural, human-centred, positive, and tangible experience, integrating the three dimensions of the New European Bauhaus. Non-exclusive specific areas of intervention could encompass, for example, the urban, recreational, living and working environments, buildings and building fabrics, mobility schemes, sustainable materials, recycling, sustainable soil use, green space development and biodiversity protection. In addition, the conference will look at how to support a behavioural change towards more sustainable practices to accelerate the transition to a sustainable and low-carbon economy. The dedicated sessions will explore different socio-cultural approaches and incentives.  

Background

The New European Bauhaus initiative was launched by President Von der Leyen in her Speech on the State of the Union in 2020. It is a creative and interdisciplinary initiative, convening a space of encounter to design future ways of living, situated at the crossroads between art, culture, social inclusion, science and technology. It brings the European Green Deal to our living places and calls for a collective effort to imagine and build a future that is sustainable, inclusive and beautiful for our minds and for our souls.

More information

Communication on the “New European Bauhaus“ September 2021

New European Bauhaus Delivery

Details

Publication date
15 November 2021
Author
Directorate-General for Environment

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