Experimental Fellowship at Bauhaus Earth

The Experimental Fellowship at Bauhaus Earth (Experimental Fellowship — Bauhaus Earth) offers emerging talents the opportunity to expand knowledge and advance practices for a sustainable architecture of the future.

The diverse fellowship projects test new modes of practice, engagement, and knowledge in relation to shifting natural and disciplinary boundaries across different geographies and contexts. Bauhaus Earth and Experimental provide critical support at key points in the projects or practices developed within the framework of the fellowship.

Through projects that combine technical aspects with spatial and aesthetic qualities of the built environment, our Fellows identify new, powerful architectural languages for a sustainable built environment. The programme provides fellows with the necessary financial freedom, professional mentorship, network, and environment to pursue their promising ideas and experimental design approaches. Each project brings together a unique constellation of emerging actors, material manufacturers, builders, planners, researchers, project-specific partners, experts, students, and local stakeholders. Together, they produce new knowledge on regional, regenerative, and circular building, bridging the gap between institutional research and building practice.

The Fellowship is a collaboration between Bauhaus Earth and Experimental, a Berlin-based non-profit organisation founded by the architect Prof. Regine Leibinger in 2022. Experimental fosters projects that chart new territory in the field of architecture to change how and with what we build. It offers emerging talents financial and organisational support, giving them space to experience the joy of experimentation and to raise unconventional questions and project ideas. Experimental is currently further developing the fellowship programme to include new formats such as publications, exhibitions, and symposia. It is also developing new collaborations and networks.

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Current Fellows

The seventh fellowship in 2025-2026 is Situated Regionalism by Ha Nguyen and Hojung Kim, founders of Material Matters (MM) Research Lab. The project explores the potential of unfired earth bricks across Vietnam, and blends it with indigenous building traditions, while developing a digital soil atlas of Vietnam's ecological zones.

Past Fellows

The sixth 2025 fellowship is Grunt (Ukrainian for “earth”), by architects Anna Pomazanna and Mykhailo Shevchenko, investigating the potential of regenerative reconstruction using earth sourced from contaminated soils by industrial, agricultural and wartime sources, with a focus on Ukraine. 

The fifth fellowship in 2025 is Earth, Lightly, by architects and artists Maria Lisogorskaya and Kaye Song. The project explores new approaches to forms of regenerative architecture. Centering our physical and emotional relationship to earth-based architecture, this practice-based experiment will explore colour, tools, performance, and play.

The fourth fellowship in 2024 went to the Argentinian duo, design researcher and environmental architect Heidi Jalkh and Angie Dub. Angie and Heidi’s project, CONQ: Marine Biobased Materials in the Built Environment, focuses on a bioceramic material produced at ambient temperature from shellfish industry waste.

The third fellowship in 2024 was awarded to architect Kevin Kimwelle from South Africa, for his project 90% plus fostered cross-disciplinary networking, bringing his South African design-build expertise to Berlin. His collaboration inspired innovative approaches in reused and recycled materials in the built environment.

In early 2023, interdisciplinary collective  Baukreisel e.V. was selected as our second Fellow for its innovative deconstruction case study concrete.matters – primary structure laboratory. The project investigates the possibilities of scaling up the reuse of deconstructed primary concrete elements in building transformation and new developments, while reflecting on existing research references, practitioners, and projects.

Our first fellowship was awarded in 2022 to not-for-profit design and research organisation Material Cultures for their project Constructive Land Berlin/Brandenburg. This project explored the potential of rewetting peatlands in Brandenburg for the production of regional bio-based building materials. The results of the fellowship were a research report and a 1:1 architectural fragment using local paludiculture materials.

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Steering of Experimental Fellowship at Bauhaus Earth

The Fellowship is led by Chrissie Muhr, Co-Managing and Artistic Director of Experimental, together with the Program Co-Managers Rosa Hanhausen and Eda Özdemir at Bauhaus Earth.

A jury meets twice a year to discuss the content and strategy of current projects, the future direction of the programme, and the selection of Fellows. To ensure impartiality, the majority of the jury consists of external, highly esteemed experts.