Ideal Spaces News Update
Workshop Loss of Cultural Heritage
Our workshop in September, co-hosted by Prof. Ettore Mazzola from the University of Notre Dame/Rome, was enthusiastically welcomed in person at our venue, as well on our worldwide livestream. It presented topics and international speakers that were involved, and presented varying points-of-view on cultural heritage and its loss from architectural, sociocultural, and technological perspectives. In regards to technology, it has also been addressed that it is a new cultural heritage in itself which at the same time, destroys cultural heritage. We had vivid discussions and interventions on the varying topics.
Part of the audience, with part of the gardens
The program can be found at https://www.idealspaces.org/projects/loss-of-cultural-heritage/, on our Ideal Spaces website (in “events”), together with the workshops’ presentations and discussions, presented in video format. There will be continuing video format releases (YouTube) from the workshop over the coming months. These releases will be expanded as well to our other media in the coming weeks.
Both the speakers and the in-person audience not only enjoyed the event itself, but also the atmosphere and our venue’s gardens. For Ideal Spaces, it was important to make the entire workshop integrated with the gardens, and to install images there which have been related to the topics dealt with. In such a way, we aimed at combining verbal presentations, discussions, nature and imagery as a new format of how to convey relevant contents.
Venue with artworks for the event. Photo U. Gehmann
Planned Collaborations
Prof. Alexandra Massini from the Accademia Vivarium Novum from Frascati (Rome) and Ideal Spaces are in the initial stages of planning a conference to be held in Frascati (Rome) to be titled Cosmos and Chaos, addressing the old and new meanings today adopted by these archetypal images. The conference is planned to include Italian and international speakers and will be held March 12-14, 2027 in Frascati.
Ideal Spaces has started conversation on a collaboration with Taimoor Khan from the Hast-o-Neest Institute of Traditional Studies and Arts, a not-for-profit educational trust from Pakistan. Ulrich Gehmann from Ideal Spaces participated online in the symposium The World We Used to Know & the World We Wish to Inhabit, September 18-20, 2026.
Jessica Croteau from the Ecological Design Collective (EDC), Baltimore, U.S.A and Ideal Spaces have begun initial conversations regarding a collaboration with the EDC; on a series of topics that will combine the core concepts that guide the work of both institutions.
Journal Urban Eidos
Our 8th issue on Cultural Heritage is coming out soon. In the various articles, the topic is illuminated from different perspectives (https://urban-eidos.com/call-for-contributions/ ). According to statistics we have received, we are nearing a million downloads and reads since the inauguration of the journal in 2024.
Cultural heritage today. Vienna_Austria. Photo U. Gehmann
Podcasts
We released podcasts with Prof. Irit Katz from University of Cambridge/UK, on the crisis of culture, and the accompanying loss of true imagination;
with Dato Norman Abdul Halim from Kuala Lumpur/Malaysia, on his foundation Yayasan KRU that deals with youth and its future through education and creativity. And with AKAR as his Flagstaff grassroots initiative for creativity, environmental consciousness and aspirational children;
with Miriam Samir Rincon from Mexico City on the Chinanampas, a world-unique ecological and cultural system from Precolumbian America still existing in its remnants. Ideal Spaces spoke with Miriam about ongoing preservation projects for that system.
They can be found on our website at https://www.idealspaces.org/podcasts-and-interviews/. Upcoming podcasts will be with Haydn Price from the BBC, with Taimoor Khan from the Hast-o-Neest Institute, with Nadia Everard from Westhoffen/France. We also introduced our new discussion format for podcasts, on the topic of algorithms affecting human conception and everyday life.
On our German website, we have podcasts with Karl-Werner Farkhou on housing, and with Chantal Keyvork on regaining public space for the public. These podcasts can be found on our German website, at https://idealspaces.de/podcasts-and-interviews/.
Selected podcasts can also be found on Substack, YouTube, as well as on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.