Who We Are

Ideal Spaces Working Group is a charitable foundation run by an international group of experts: cultural theorists, digital engineers, and modelers, architects, and artists. With a focus on the relationship between space, place, and community, the group aims to develop concepts that will shape better contemporary living spaces and places for the future. 

This is not only a question of architecture but also of imagination. The group focuses in its work on the central question: what kind(s) of architecture is best suited for what kind(s) of human beings? Imagination also extends to questions of social imagination and involves humans projecting inner images (‘ideas’) of how they shall or want to live. When expressed as an architecture of the built space, social imagination is about ideal spaces in the literal sense. Ideal spaces are informed by certain preconceptions people hold, such as of the world around them, which consist of culturally inherited ideas and symbols. This can also be applied to architectural space. These ideas are based on central assumptions about people and the spaces they occupy. Though these are mostly implicit and exist as tacit knowledge, or an unthought known, they inform actual architecture, and real space. 

Most examples of modern architecture, a style that makes up the real world in which we live, neglect one essential human need: to live in communities. This has to be changed. Communities need places and not just spaces for mere human existence, but real places of identity, distinctiveness, and belonging. The Ideal Spaces Foundation aims to help make this change.

Drawing from cultural, historical and technological research, Ideal Spaces Working Group develops and hosts exhibitions, events and platforms of exchange that bring together policy makers, scholars, cultural institutions, urban planners, architects and citizens. The European city often serves as a guideline for this work, since it thrives on the concept of free citizenship, on the ability of citizens to influence the built space and the development of their city:  the essence of democracy.

Based on this, the Ideal Spaces Working Group aims to assist in the development of new concepts and ways of generating ‘ideal spaces’ for communities. As such, we are not only concerned with architecture, but also with processes of imagination, both of which are firmly rooted in cultural memory. The group poses questions such as: what can we learn from the past and present, in order to build a better future? Which basic assumptions have led to which types of architecture? Ideal Spaces team seeks answers to these questions, and with ‘community’ placed at the center of its work, uses project work and events to inspire real change to people’s living conditions.

Through the intersection of art, science, technology, and vision, Ideal Spaces Working Group is tackling one of the most important problems of the future: ongoing urbanization and the deterioration of natural and human conditions.