Coop Design Research

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Coop Design Research

Design Research in coop. with Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, Hochschule Anhalt and Humboldt Universität

COOP Design Research Master of Science Program

The one-year MSc. program is conducted by Anhalt University of Applied Sciences and Bauhaus Dessau Foundation in cooperation with Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. It is conceived as a preparatory step towards a doctoral study. It strives to integrate design and research, which are often perceived as separate disciplines. The practical experience of de

sign gained by participants in previous study semesters and in professional practice provides the basis for an approach to design now primarily based on research and analysis. Links:
COOP Design Research Website: https://coopdesignresearch.de
Bauhaus Dessau Foundation: www.bauhaus-dessau.de
Anhalt University of Applied Sciences: www.afg.hs-anhalt.de
The Cluster of Excellence Image-Knowledge-Gestaltung of Humboldt Universität zu Berlin Link: www.interdisciplinary-laboratory.hu-berlin.de

More than any other institution, the Bauhaus Dessau expressed a modern understanding of design that took a sceptical view of antiquated design traditions and substituted these with direct research into materials and the innovative potentials of technology and science. Since then, design has been perceived as a cooperative discipline that synthesises diverse aspects of knowledge. From Autumn 2014 for the first time the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation and Anhalt University of Applied Sciences in cooperation with the transdisciplinary research cluster Image-Knowledge-Gestaltung of Humboldt Universität zu Berlin will offer a Masters Programme, which will engage with the Bauhaus’s legacy in design research.

23/07/2026

We will be back soon!

15/07/2026

Bauhaus Matters: Materials of Modernity
Discourse | Cracks | Narrative
Conference lecture recordings available for streaming

Revisiting the material and cultural artefacts of the Bauhaus today opens up discussion on how to approach contemporary transitions in architecture and construction. With the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation (Bauhaus Dessau ), we organized the international conference reconsidering architecture, design and materials from 1920s industrial modernism to the present new climatic regime.

Keynote by Albena Yaneva
Film Collages by Florian Wüst

Watch lectures and discussions in the three theme panels:

Building materials – Media of modernity
with Kathleen James Chakraborty, Robin Rehm, Simon Mitchell, Regina Bittner, Dorothea Roos

Architecture of the construction industry,
with Kim Förster, Monika Motylińska, Katie Lloyd Thomas, Stephan Pinkau

Building as assemblage, with Karola Dierichs / Robert Stock,
Santiago del Hierro, Philipp Misselwitz,
Hannah le Roux, Elke Beyer

Part of the centennial anniversary of Bauhaus Dessau, organised by Bauhaus Dessau and Hochschule Anhalt

Link in the bio, under Latest: News and Events

Images:
Thomas Meyer / OSTKREUZ– Agentur der Fotografen GmbH

08/07/2026

Revisiting Floating...
Recently, the (un)learning urbanity symposium (.urbanity) brought some of us back to the Floating University (FLOATING BERLIN) in Berlin — blooming, hosting exhibitions, talks and workshops, and igniting conversations between sun, rain torrents and thunderstorms. A weekend asking what urbanism could look like if we paid closer attention to different matters, such as recognising collective memory of trauma, understanding minute mosses, observing invisibilised waste, or even creating communities with something as basic as potatoes.

Earlier in the year, we had become acquainted with Floating as a natureculture learning site in a workshop with Gilly Karjevsky (), co-founder of Floating, as part of the COOP ‘Design as projection’ course. With her, we walked across the former airport Tempelhofer Feld towards the rainwater retention basin, learning about water cycles, urban infrastructure design and the ecological, social and political layers shaping each space. We discussed how the temporary architectures and the collective of cultural practitioners and researchers are anchored in the basin, interacting with algae, water, weather and sediment, as well as the attitudes and power play of municipal administration bodies – and how it is shaped through financial, political and natural conditions all at once. A constellation and site that could keep evolving, every season, given support to let it be. This made us reflect: what level(s) of design, cultural and political activism does an infrastructure space actually need to serve a community?

07/07/2026

Tag der offenen Tür: Am 17. Juli 2026 zeigt der Fachbereich Architektur, Facility Management und Geoinformation von 13:00 bis 18:00 Uhr in unterschiedlichen Ausstellungen, Präsentationen und Installationen Arbeiten von Studierenden.

Neben Rundgängen über den Campus Dessau werden auch Vorträge zu den Studiengängen Architektur, Immobilien- und Baumanagement, Nachhaltige Stadtentwicklung, Nachhaltiger Immobilienbestand sowie Vermessung und Geoinformatik angeboten.

Die Architektenkammer Sachsen-Anhalt informiert zu Praktika und Berufseinstieg.

Wer beim Tag der offenen Tür des Fachbereichs, die Hochschule, ihre Häuser, Ateliers und Werkstätten besichtigen und mit Lehrenden und Studierenden ins Gespräch kommen will, findet hier genauere Informationen:
➡️ www.hs-anhalt.de/hitdessau

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Open Day: On July 17, 2026, from 13:00 to 18:00, the Department of Architecture, Facility Management, and Geoinformation will showcase student work through various exhibitions, presentations, and installations.

In addition to guided tours of the Dessau campus, there will be lectures on the degree programs in Architecture, Real Estate and Construction Management, Sustainable Urban Development, Sustainable Real Estate Portfolio, and Surveying and Geoinformatics.

The Saxony-Anhalt Chamber of Architects will provide information on internships and career entry.

Anyone interested in visiting the department’s buildings, studios, and workshops, and in talking with faculty and students can find detailed information here:
➡️ https://t1p.de/ls5vm

06/07/2026

In the workshop “Mapping as a Tool for Research, we discussed how mapping and drawing could support both a relational and collaborative understanding of space. We departed from the question of how mapping could foster conversations and sharing of spatial knowledge among research collaborators. Participants traced different moments and geographies of engagement and cooperation in their research projects.

Centring mapping as a tool for tracing translocal mobilities with(in) and against infrastructural systems of selective bordering and globalized commodity production, Elke Beyer reflected on collaborative exhibition projects as well as research and learning approaches to spatialities of commodity chains and material circulations.

Through examples of researching commons in different urban contexts in Germany, Dagmar Pelger () explored mapping as a tool for spatial analysis and for negotiation of urban space, from individual stakeholders and independent initiatives to institutional bodies. With her, we reflected on producing maps as collaborative process of decision making and design.

Sharing instances of fieldwork from ongoing research on plantation territories in the Dominican Republic, Lía Duarte Rodríguez () reflected on the possibilities of drawing when working with/in contested landscapes. She discussed how drawing and slowing pace could initiate other interactions with communities and serve as a tool incorporating multiple perspectives on how spaces of and beyond the plantation are shaped, transformed and maintained.

From a workshop and mappings (inter-) Weaving Scales, Bastian Beyer () and Iva Rešetar, (), along with Vera Lauf and COOP students Tanya Jose and Aliya Farsin, traced different layers of research and learning with/on cellulose ecologies. Their mapping practices unfolded around histories of cellulose production, its by-products, the industries it enabled in Bitterfeld-Wolfen and their aftermath, including cultural, material and toxic legacies.

Thanks to those who joined, and we look forward to continuing the conversations!

(Image credits on the comments)

19/06/2026

Guest Talk:  Dusting Off the 19th Century Interior. Towards a History of Domestic Environments

Dr. Fabian Zimmer (TU Berlin)

Monday June 22, 12:30-14h
Hochschule Anhalt, Campus Dessau, Building 4, Room 04-114

Dust – as inconspicuous as it might at first seem – can change our perception of domestic spaces and interior design. This talk explores mundane practices and experiences of cleaning and removing dust in 19th-century German middle-class households. Contrary to the reputation of the 19th-century bourgeois interior as a dusty, dysfunctional and lifeless space, separated from the outside world, Fabian Zimmer’s research shifts focus to the functionality of bourgeois interiors and their environmental entanglements. He proposes situating domestic environments and their histories as sites and objects of study that interconnect with broader environmental history.

Dr. Fabian Zimmer is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department for the History of Technology at Technische Universität Berlin, as well as associated researcher at the Center for Metropolitan Studies as well as project coordinator of the Berlin Anthropocene Lab. He works at the intersection of environmental history, the history of technology and the history of knowledge. His research focuses on the history of comfort and human needs in 19th century domestic environments.

Image credits: Mandl, Maria Mathilde. Das Heim von Heute: Ein dem neuesten Stande der Wohn- und Lebenskultur entsprechendes Handbuch – Ein Führer durch Heim, Haushalt, zeitgemäßes Ernährungswesen, Technik, Kinderpflege, Handarbeit, Körperkultur, Handwerk im Hause, nebst 3000 praktischen Winken für alle Fragen des täglichen Lebens. Leipzig/Wien 1928, S. 209.

15/06/2026

We warmly invite you to our upcoming workshop, Mapping as a Tool for Research, on Wednesday June 17.

Sharing and reflecting on mapping practices and experiences in different research constellations and geographies, the workshop aims to explore communicative and collaborative situations that arise through mapping or drawing in research processes. In dialogue with guests and participants, we look forward to discuss mapping as a tool that facilitates a multidirectional exchange of ideas and spatial knowledge among various interlocutors and collaborators in research.

We will have a few places for interested colleagues and visitors!

12/06/2026

Strolling, Sensing and Assembling Spatial Storytelling of Everyday Maintenance

This week we are revisiting some of our practices and inputs revolving around mapping from the past term.
 In a workshop with urban researchers Lía Duarte Rodríguez (HSA) and Lea Weise (TUM), we reflected on the “seemingly unimportant labour” of cleaners, gleaners, and fixers, and any other subject (human or non-human) whose efforts go unnoticed in the task of maintaining and sustaining life in urban settings. In an introductory lecture they discussed the entanglements of care, maintenance, and the production of space. Drawing on feminist spatial theory and practice, we explored different methods and scales—from the body to everyday spaces. We combined and put into test routine practices, such as walking/strolling together with drawing/mapping and spatial storytelling to begin noticing the conditions upon which maintenance labour takes place and the spatialities implicated.

📸: Collage showcasing the student’s collected urban traces of maintenance + impressions of the one-day workshop (Lía Duarte Rodríguez & Lea Weise, 2025)

11/06/2026

Weaving Scales:
Exploring ecologies and material relationships through mapping.

Next week, we return to mapping with Iva Resetar and Bastian Beyer (both members of the HU Matters of Activity Cluster), but the story began much earlier.

From a workshop to the Bauhaus Study Rooms in 2025  In our very first workshop of the Winter 2025 batch, ‘Weaving Scales’, we were invited to rethink what weaving could mean through questions such as: Can bacteria weave? Can architecture become soft? By being introduced to ‘bacterial cellulose’, we explored scales, ecologies, and material relationships beyond conventional understandings of making.   Our research took us to Bitterfeld-Wolfen Film Museum, where we traced the histories of cellulose production, its by-products, and the industries it enabled, including an entire film industry that emerged from these material developments. At the same time, we encountered the environmental legacies of this history, learning how sites such as Silbersee and the Grube Greppin pit still contain residues from dye production.  The mapping workshop that followed became a catalyst for individual research inquiries, later presented at Learning Environments in the Bauhaus Study Rooms 2025.

📸 Doreen Ritzau

Adresse

Gropiusallee 38
Dessau-Roßlau
06846

Telefon

+491771679772

Webseite

http://www.coopdesignresearch.de/

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