Innovation in Teaching | LEERstand: RELEARN, RETHINK, REDESIGN, REUSE 

Counteract vacancies! The tight housing market and the climate crisis are professional challenges for students of architecture and planning, and at the same time they affect their everyday life. In this context, the focus is shifting to vacancy: empty houses, unused spaces - and the prospect of reactivating, repurposing and rebuilding them. LERR:RRR is working with student initiatives at the University of Kassel on new teaching content and methods that correspond to the paradigm change from new building to rebuilding. Together with student peers and ambassadors, our department is developing an innovative experimental and open space for research-based and design-based learning of “reconstruction”. A student-led Vacancy Lab explores the social consequences of vacancy theoretically and empirically.

In topic-specific design studios, the strategies RELEARN, RETHINK, REDESIGN, REUSE are developed over four semesters with regard to paradigm changes in design in the context of the building turnaround. In excursions, we visit successful practical examples of transformed vacancies. In assemblies, the focus is on interaction with affected civil society in order to understand the effects of vacancy and lack of space and to discuss alternatives. We analyse the processes and results of Freies Umbaustudio, a practice-oriented interdisciplinary teaching format in which students are didactically prepared for the new design thinking in the redesign of self-selected vacancies. In all these formats, we work together with students on new teaching formats for the task of reconstruction, which will play a much greater role in professional practice than before. Web formats, podcasts and publications prepare the acquired knowledge.

Duration: 2025-2027

Funded by: Freiraum 2025 | Stiftung Innovation in der Hochschullehre

Projektleitung: Prof. Dr. Gabu Heindl

Forschungsmitarbeit: WM Helena Rafalsky, WM Alexander Rakow, WM Florine Schüschke und studentische Hilfskräfte Laetitia Göttermann und Vincent Claushues