What will Space Worlds 2021 bring?

The tenth edition of Raumwelten 2021, the platform for scenography, architecture and media in a hybrid format, will take place from November 17 to 19, 2021 under the claim “Space for coincidences”. Speaking for the first time: Wolf D. Prix, Founding Partner, CEO and Design Principal of COOP HIMMELB(L)AU.

At NXT A you will receive a 20% discount on your hybrid conference pass until November 16. Click here for the ticket and further information.

This November marks the 10th edition of Raumwelten, the platform for scenography, architecture and media. Under the slogan “Space for coincidences”, international speakers will be exploring coincidence as an unplannable and therefore incredibly exciting variable in the public, media and digital space that surrounds us in workshops and lectures. Do coincidences even exist and what role do they play in scenography and architecture – two disciplines that thrive on precise planning and the elimination of unwanted coincidences? While public space is often treated as a place of chance encounters, digital space seems to make chance disappear: So have algorithms and artificial intelligence replaced chance? Scenography and the staging (of space) in particular thrive on the surprise and irritation that often arise from (apparent) coincidences. New ideas and projects often emerge from chance encounters or unintentional actions generate unusual, productive constellations. In 2021, the hybrid event from November 17 to 19, 2021 will enable encounters in different spaces – on site in the Karlskaserne Ludwigsburg and online at raum-welten.com.

In 2021, the Raumwelten themselves will become a chance laboratory. The speakers will appear in different, partly playful, partly performative lecture formats. The Raumwelten curators will generate unexpected and unpredictable formats and interactions between the speakers and the audience with their panels, which this year are called tables, and a specially developed scenography. Tobias Wallisser has once again taken over a panel. The professor teaches at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart (ABK) and co-founded the international office LAVA (Laboratory for Visionary Architecture). His Chair of Innovative Building and Spatial Concepts is all about theories, concepts and speculative thinking, but also about realizing the imagined. At his architecture table, Tobias Wallisser discusses the relationship between chaos and chance: how can the unpredictable arise in design? Has the absence of predictability become controllable by means of computer-based processes? And what are the effects of factors that were not at the beginning of the planning or were not foreseeable?

Wolf D. Prix from COOP HIMMELB(L)AU as a speaker for the first time

Wolf D. Prix, founding partner, CEO and Design Principal of COOP HIMMELB(L)AU, will be taking part as a speaker for the first time. His globally active office is known for its innovative and complex design approach and operates at the interface of architecture, art and technology. “In a three-way discussion together with Stephan Trüby, Professor of Fundamentals of Modern Architecture and Design at the University of Stuttgart, we will look back on his long creative career,” says Tobias Wallisser. “We will see how things were created. Wolf D. Prix probably never thought in the 19690s that he would one day build the European Central Bank.” In their panel “Scenography”, Janina Poesch and Sabine Marinescu (PLOT, Stuttgart) argue that humans are possibly the main chance factor in spatial staging and choreography. Other Raumwelten speakers include Eva Neklyaeva (Director Theaterfestival Baltic Circle, Helsinki), Jochen Becker (Metro-Zone, Berlin) and Ralf Zuleeg (d&b audiotechnik, Backnang) as well as curator Birgit Möckel. She will give a keynote speech on the topic of “Chance & Design”.

An important component of Raumwelten 2021 is the Raumwelten-Kino: the films presented combine the content of Raumwelten 2021 with the medium of film, create contexts and open up new horizons in terms of architecture, scenography and moving images. On the one hand, this year’s Raumwelten-Kino deals with the conference theme “Space for Coincidences” – especially in the film “Holding Positions” (2019) by Laura Mahlberg, which tells of chance encounters at an airport. The director will be present at the screening. With the documentary “Big Time” (2017), Raumwelten is also dedicated to one of the most important architects of our time, Bjarke Ingels from the Danish architecture studio BIG. Here you can find the complete movie program.

Implementation of the Raumwelten 2021 campaign followed chance

The motto of Raumwelten 2021 – “Space for coincidences” – is illustrated by an accompanying campaign: its central motif is the portrait of a person, with the face covered by a white square. This stands for the free space in every person’s head, in which coincidences can only be perceived. The result is not blindness, but liberation – and thus space for something new. The implementation of the campaign also followed chance: all the people portrayed were sought and found in a joint participatory campaign with the Ludwigsburger Kreiszeitung newspaper. The Ludwigsburg “accidental citizens” were photographed by the renowned photographer Reiner Pfisterer. The photo campaign and the stories behind it can be discovered here Raumwelten 2021.

In addition to Tobias Wallisser, the curatorial team for the last edition of 2020 includes Jean-Louis Vidière Ésèpe, scenographer and creative director, plot makers Janina Poesch and Sabine Marinescu and Berlin-based scenographer Charlotte Tamschick. All conferences and lectures will be streamed online and will subsequently be available in the media library (until November 28, 2021). A 3D platform also invites you to a digital get-together. Participants can then meet, exchange ideas and network in the digitized inner courtyard of the Ludwigsburg art center Karlskaserne.

The Raumwelten took place in November 2020 under the slogan “Raumwelten 2020 2.0 – Please Install New Spatial System Now!”. Read here what the program had to offer.