Bauhaus of the Seas – a Vision for the New European Bauhaus

Monday 24 March 2025, 11.30am – 1pm including light lunch
QUT Creative Industries Precinct, Building Z9, Room 607 (how to get there >)
Hybrid event: in person and zoom

ABSTRACT

In this talk, I will present the Bauhaus of the Seas (BoS), one of the lighthouse projects of the New European Bauhaus (NEB), the only one coordinated by a southern European country. I will present the BoS framework based on an interspecies, intergenerational, and intercultural design process, which includes contributions from artistic and cultural agents to inspire new urban interventions. The project is rolling out in seven European cities: Lisbon and Oeiras, Venice and Genova and Mamlø, Hamburg and Rotterdam. Finally, I will provide examples of how digital technologies are being used in BoS to promote and scale new urban interventions, from interspecies assemblies to the use of AI, DLTs, DOAs and interactive storytelling. This talk will illustrate examples also coming out of the BIG project, which looks at blockchain for social good and how it was used in BoS to support the traceability of participatory processes and DAOs for interspecies assemblies.

This guest seminar is hosted by the QUT Design Lab and kindly supported by the Horizon Europe project BIG – Blockchain Technologies and Design Innovation for Social Good (GA 952226).

SPEAKER

Nuno Jardim Nunes is currently a Visiting Professor with the QUT Design Lab and a full professor at Tecnico – University of Lisbon and the President and founder of the Interactive Technologies Institute (ITI), Portugal's leading HCI and design research institute. Nuno is the co-director of the Carnegie Mellon International Partnership and adjunct faculty at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Nuno strongly advocates the role of human-centric design in participatory culture and sustainability. His research influenced how digital technologies (including sensors, ML/AI, interactive storytelling, and mixed reality) can engage and inspire digital citizens to act sustainably and connect to nature and the broader ecosystems. Recently, the Portuguese Government nominated Nuno to coordinate the working group to propose a vision for Portugal's participation in the New European Bauhaus. His contribution led to the Bauhaus of the Seas manifesto he is currently pursuing as a thematic NEB proposal. Nuno organised several conferences of the ACM SIGCHI and published more than 200 peer-reviewed papers in international journals and conferences in HCI, software, energy, sustainability, design, and service science. He was PI and co-PI of several research projects totaling more than €30M from European, national, and industry-funded.

READINGS

• Nunes, Nuno Jardim. “The Bauhaus of the Seas: A Manifesto for the New European Bauhaus.” Design Issues 40, no. 2 (April 1, 2024): 90–97. https://doi.org/10.1162/desi_a_00758
• Torretta, Nicholas B., Mariana Pestana, Frederico Duarte, Cristiano Pedroso-Roussado, Luisa Metelo Seixas, Valentina Nisi, and Nuno Jardim Nunes. “Navigating Problematic Bauhaus Inheritances: Critiques, Implications, and Questions from the Bauhaus of the Seas NEB Lighthouse.” Design Issues 40, no. 3 (July 1, 2024): 105–17. https://doi.org/10.1162/desi_a_00770
• Katerina Inglezaki, Nikos Katsikis, Diego Sepulveda Carmona, Mariana Pestana, and Nuno Jardim Nunes. 2024. Agroecology as a Practice of Care supported by Blockchain and DAOs – The speculative case of Murcia's Mar Menor Lagoon. In Proceedings of the 27th International Academic Mindtrek Conference (Mindtrek '24). ACM, 109–120. https://doi.org/10.1145/3681716.3681737
• Pedroso-Roussado, Cristiano, Klaas Kuitenbrouwer, Vera Fearns, Mariana Pestana, Valentina Nisi, Ann Light, and Nuno Jardim Nunes. “Zoöp Futures: Towards an Organisational Framework for Ecological Cooperation between Humans and More-than-Humans.” Futures, 2025, 103584. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2025.103584