Berlin Award 2021

Floating University is a natureculture learning site located in a polluted rainwater retention basin in urban Berlin. The rainwater basin receives the rainwater runoff from the former Tempelhof Airport and adjacent Columbia Damm Road, since the 1930s. After nearly 100 years, the airport has become a public park and its rainwater basin is inhabited by water plants, birds, frogs, bats and foxes who acutely feel the basin’s changing water levels. Floating University is an experimental educational campus. The Floating e.V. - 50+ artists, designers, architects, scientists, engineers - came together with neighbors, kids and visitors to construct an auditorium, multipurpose classrooms, workshop spaces, a kitchen, a greenhouse, and a bar. Since 2018, Floating University hosts cultural, educational and discursive programs at different levels, from academic to child education. In the first year alone, over 10,000 people came to visit and 25 universities from around Europe activated the campus for different learning experiments, workshops, lectures, discussions, dinners and film screenings, all under the broad theme of reimagining life in contemporary urban space and peoples’ relationship with the city and nature.