Archipelago of Possible Futures

New European Bauhaus Summit 2025

Ocean Space, Venice- May 10, 2025

How can we rethink, reframe, and reshape the critical infrastructures of Europe through collective imagination?

Launched at the New European Bauhaus Festival in Brussels in 2024, the Archipelago for Possible Futures is a growing platform that unites organisations across Europe working at the intersection of science, technology, culture, and the arts. The Archipelago Summit 2025 took place on May 10 at TBA21–Academy’s Ocean Space in Venice during the opening days of the Venice Architectural Biennale to gather leading thinkers, artists, technologists, and organizations engaging with sustainable, democratic, and inspiring futures. From the depths of oceanic systems to the heights of supercomputing and AI, the Archipelago was conceived as a call to design new imaginaries and infrastructures for Europe’s ecological and digital transitions.

The concept of the archipelago, prominent in the work of Édouard Glissant, has emerged in New European Bauhaus (NEB) through a conversation with curator Hans Ulrich Obrist and architect Rem Koolhaas, and is envisioned as a constellation of transformative practices on the ground. Francesca Bria ( New European Bauhaus ), Jose Luis de Vicente ( Dhub ) , and Markus Reymann ( TBA21 ) have set the intention for the day: to engage in interdisciplinary dialogue shaping the future of policy in Europe that centers sustainability, democracy, and human rights. This exercise in collective imagination called for the design of new architectures that repair our relationship with nature and serve both people and the planetary commons. Some of the central aspects of this approach were the ideas of digital sovereignty, along with the inclusion of cultural imagination in the processes of social and environmental transformation. 

“We are at a moment in history where the health of the biosphere is threatened by our own actions.” –Kim Stanley Robinson

How can cultural narratives help us conjure a vision of regenerative futures? How can we bridge the divide between knowledge and action? In his keynote address, the world-renowned science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson called for courage and solidarity and emphasised that planetary regeneration demands a spiritual and cultural renewal. Science fiction is a valuable strategy as it combines the world of fact (science) with the world of values (fiction), effectively “bridging the gap that philosophy says cannot be bridged”. In the context of regenerative worldmaking, architecture and design are forms of science fiction, mediating between speculative and tangible worlds and building an embodied vision for the future. 

Culture & Climate: Rethinking the Green Transition

The first thematic cluster centered on the role of transdisciplinary collaboration between the arts, science and technology to aid with Europe’s Green Transition, tackling key challenges of its policy impact with speakers including the European Union Director General for Environment Patrick Anthony Child–who has highlighted three central imperatives of European policy: water resilience, circular economy, and nature restoration–alongside John Schellnhuber, Director General at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and Iñaqui Carnicero , Secretary General of the Urban Agenda, Housing and Architecture in Spain Ministerio de Vivienda y Agenda Urbana .

The first wave of the New European Bauhaus policy and funding initiative promoted solutions, institutions, projects, and strategies that have supported the Green transition in an enjoyable, convenient, and sustainable way. Introduced by Laura Hagemann Arellano (NEB) and moderated by Christophe De Jaeger of GLUON BXL , the presented projects included the TOVA Housing Prototype (Areti Markopolou and Alexandre Dubor of the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia ), Ripple (Orla Murphy, Co-Director of the UCD Centre for Irish Towns), STARTS (Veronica Liebl, Ars Electronica ), the Sony Computer Science Laboratories (Vittorio Loreto), and the Bauhaus of the Seas Sails Lighthouse Pilot, introduced by TBA21 Director Markus Reymann, as well as representatives as of the art-science-tech ecosystems, such as Jose Luis de Vicente (FAST , DHub Barcelona) and Marc Brandsma ( CultTech Association ).

Studies show that European citizens, by and large, support environmental transformation policies. How come the policy does not follow suit? TBA21 Director Markus Reymann highlighted the need for more regenerative environmental policy, highlighting the European coastline as a crucial aspect of the European biosphere. With 41% of the population living along the coastline, the flagship project Bauhaus of the Seas Sails, in which TBA21 is a key actor, formulates the shared concerns of the sea through the lens of sustainability, inclusion, and aesthetics. How can we use cultural activities to foster new relationships? How do we respond to the needs of the sea? How do we ensure that we include different actors in the process and that the processes are locally grounded? Bauhaus of the Seas Seails seeks to answer these inquiries from diverse perspectives, considering our relationship with the sea to demonstrate creative propositions for climate neutrality with a particular focus on coastal cities as an interface to healthy seas, ocean, and water bodies.

Another concrete proposal for a life-affirming governance is the Zoöp, a model that makes the interests of nonhuman life part of organisational decision-making. In a Zoöp, human and more-than-human life work together to foster a practice of ecological regeneration. Such a space takes the needs and rights of the entire biotic community into consideration, as exemplified by the summit’s venue, Ocean Space, which has embraced the Zoöp model as part of its organisational ethos.

Code & Care: Toward an Ecological Digital Future

“The datacenter is the factory of the 21st century. Data centers are fundamentally broken. They are currently using far too much energy on models that are massively overtrained, in some cases, using water that is just evaporating off into the air away from drinking water reserves. This has to come to a completely different understanding if they are going to be the core engines of this coming century.“  –Kate Crawford

The day’s second focus addressed the question of infrastructures for Europe's Digital Common. How can we ensure Europe’s digital sovereignty in a way that is regenerative to nature and fosters a culture of care? Through the EuroStack vision, Francesca Bria and Dirma Janse presented a European alternative for digital sovereignty—a bold vision for a European tech model rooted in democracy, sustainability, and innovation.

With a discussion on Europe’s AI future, including supercomputing, quantum, and public models for arts and culture, the program focused on Europe's leadership in public supercomputing and open AI models for culture and the arts. This talk highlighted how public AI empowers artists and cultural producers—democratizing access to cutting-edge sovereign tools and fueling a thriving cultural ecosystem, featuring speakers including Alexandra Geese ( European Parliament ), Fernando Cucchietti and Javier Pantoja ( Barcelona Supercomputing Center ), Mattias Hauser and Uwe Woessner ( HLRS - High-Performance Computing Center Stuttgart ), Dr Bettina Kames ( LAS Art Foundation ) and moderation by Niklas Maak .

The program culminated in a session exploring radical alternatives to dominant models of digital infrastructure, calling for a turn towards post-extractivist ecologies in a time of technological weaponization and techno-oligarchic power. Featuring Kate Crawford (author, USC, Knowing Machines), Evgeny Morozov (author, The Net Delusion, A Sense of Rebellion), Benjamin Bratton (University of California, Antikythera), architect Marina Otero Verzier , and moderated by Christopher Roth, the lively debate opened the issues of the ethics and politics of AI in terms of sustainability, sovereignty, and welfare, emphasising the necessity to continue envisioning the future of AI while remaining critical of existing commercial models which can be both unethical and unsustainable. 

Five Echoes from Emerging Worlds

“AI models are as creative and curious as the people who engage with them.” –Mat Dryhurst

Throughout the day, five scenarios introduced a range of artistic practices that engage critically with urgent contemporary issues: Giulia Foscari ’s Voice of the Commons focused on the governance of shared planetary domains, and SUPERFLEX’s Deep Sea Minding, and Marco Barotti ’s Coral Sonic Resilience engage with the Ocean as a site of multispecies cohabitation, bridging speculative design and ecological engineering. Within the context of energy ecologies, The Solar Biennale: A Social Imaginary for a Sun-Powered Future was presented by Scott Longfellow ( mudac - musée cantonal de design et d'arts appliqués contemporains ) as a pioneering initiative that reimagines solar energy through the lenses of design. In the context of public space, the open-air exhibition series Plasmata: Urban Playgrounds for Culture and Innovation was introduced by Prodromos Tsiavos ( ONASSIS FOUNDATION ), highlighting creative urban interventions that merge technological experimentation with social interaction. The final scenario turned to the role of artificial intelligence in culture: artists Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst, recipients of the STARTS Prize in 2022, presented their collaborative practice that utilizes AI and virtual ecosystems to navigate uneven distributions of power.