Intro

In this seminar, the students had the task to transform the buildings of the old brewery Bärenquell into the University of the Future considering the vision of the project developer: "Our mission is to create a space for you to create. Bärenquell is a meeting point where art, culture, science, and innovation come together under the same roof" (https://baerenquell.eu/) Secondly, they had to take care of the special atmosphere of this place which is situated directly by the river Spree with a size of 40,750 m2 and famous street art (https://baerenquell.eu/gallery/).

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Challenge

Due to Covid19, the whole seminar had to be held online. Usually, I ask the students of my seminar "to think with their hands" (David Kelley) in order to make them visualize their ideas by rough prototypes built from the inspiring material they could find in our Design Thinking Lab and go out for field research, street interviews, and photo circuits to catch the spirit of a place. But excursions were not allowed. Each one had to stay at home alone.

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Outcome

The students decided to transform the old brewery into a space "for sustainable living and learning through an open dialog". Based on this purpose, they developed a social media campaign and mood boards for internal use to visualize their ideas for in- and outdoor spaces where students, locals, scientists, artists, and people from start-ups and companies could meet and learn from each other either analog, digital or hybrid. All these ideas should guarantee openness for a new kind of learning and working.

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Area descriptions of the students

1. University area

Lecture hall:
Various open lecture rooms with good infrastructure, suitable for both working together or alone and move away from standard repetitive design of classrooms.‍‍

Library:
...to have as much natural lightning as possible, create relaxing and comfortable atmosphere for reading and studying.

Study space:
From 24 hours studio to catch the deadline, small room for study alone, to open workspace for group projects will be available to support all type of study.

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2. Drone area, hacker spaces & computer labs

Drone area:
bring together different experts to work on a common subject
- racing -> fun
- building drones -> technicians, artists,...
- build a racetrack -> artists, architects,...
- program drones (+AI) -> computer science
- use drones in industry supply chain -> business studies,...

Hacker spaces & computer labs:
give people the opportunity to come together and try things, work together, create ideas, social (media) networking

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3. Museum & Open Gallery

Starting from brewery, canvas for local artists to do murals. This museum will not only be a place to record history but also art. Murals as art installation on the not only museum walls but also some of the other building.

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4. Community Hub

For example cafés to study and hangout, community center club activity, sports center and social event available for both students and locals.

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5. Outdoor area

Meeting points and market place:
Outdoor restaurant in the summer, night market or Christmas market, open multifunctional area for events.

Sunset lounge:
Enjoy the river, place for relaxation, socializing and sport such as jogging track.

Community garden:
Rooftop garden or wall garden can be a way to have maximum green-space within the complex.

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Process

The Future of Leadership

In times of New Work, it is expected that people work highly self-dependent. To prepare students well, I started the seminar with exercises in self-guidance and a lesson about the roles of a Responsible Leader (Maak. Ulrich). After that, they had a training in Mindful Leadership by Melanie Spreeberg before they listened to an interview with Mohamed Amer about organic leadership and the meaning of leadership in different cultures. Finally, they discussed the responsibility of a designer after they had seen the film "The power of ten". It was my intention that they reflected on their own role as a potential leader and designer before they started the human-centered and value-driven Design Thinking Process. Based on this mindset, they defined the values for the University of the Future which should guide the design process.

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Values

Sustainability, Eco-friendliness, Inclusiveness, Interdisciplinary, Multiperspectivity, Teamwork, Reliability, Innovation, Tolerance, happiness, social, freedom, diversity, self-determination, adventure, friendship

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Keywords

Community, networking, meeting new people, international, study together, have fun together, cohesion, campus life, nature, innovation, new technologies, future oriented, good atmosphere, creativity, options, health, interdisciplinary, cozy, modern

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The Digital Design Thinking Process

During the Design Thinking Process, the world wide web became the new playground for the students with all the chatrooms, whiteboards, videos, photos, and digital libraries. They started research about universities of the future, interviewed students from around the globe, locals, artists, and others to get to know the needs and desires of them related to the University of the Future before they built mood boards for their final presentation. All this creativity took place online.

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Key Insight

Design Thinking works very well online where the following conditions are met: A challenge which motivates, a precise agenda and a workbook as a guide through the process, co-lecturing with external experts, intensive team training to build up trust, working in small groups, feedback after each unit, good technical support by an expert for communication design (C.Rackelmann).

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Conclusion

Those Universities will meet the needs of students in the future who will transform their education program in order to include social and environmental aspects in their study programs and who will offer more and more analog, digital or hybrid cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary seminars for all to enforce the local and global dialog of lecturers, students, scientists, companies, and institutions. Thanks to the worldwide web, there are plenty of new options like co-lecturing with lecturers from different parts of the world in an online seminar with students from all over the world.