The Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and Goethe University Frankfurt am Main will receive over seven million euros in funding for their research training group »Gewohnter Wandel. Gesellschaftliche Transformation und räumliche Materialisierung des Wohnens« from the »Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation). Starting in autumn 2024, junior researchers in Weimar and Frankfurt will be carrying out interdisciplinary research on the current housing supply situation.

Housing is a basic human requirement and is fundamental for individual and social development. Housing reflects historic upheavals and social change processes. A major challenge for modern urban development is creating more socially just housing.

Today’s social developments shape the built environment of tomorrow. To this end, the group is focussing on changes caused by social conflict, environmental demands, and digitalisation processes in the living environment. Their questions include, for example: What are the challenges, problems, contradictions and conflicts this poses for housing? How does the built living environment influence future social developments, and how should it shape them?

The research group’s work will explore the tense relationship between social transformation and the built environment. Their aim is to develop research perspectives that allow questions of housing, its transformation and its future to be systematically examined from a social and spatial-structural perspective. The group brings together expertise from the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and Goethe University Frankfurt am Main: The project includes experts from Weimar, whose perspectives on housing are planning and engineering or design-related, and experts from Frankfurt, whose housing research perspective is based on social sciences and humanities.

Up to 36 doctoral theses on housing issues can be completed within the project’s nine-year funding period. The Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and Goethe University Frankfurt am Main research training group will receive 7.2 million euros from the DFG during the first five-year funding period. The Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, as primary applicant for the project, will initially take on the role of spokesperson for the group. Additional cooperation partners include the »Institut Wohnen und Umwelt Darmstadt«, the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences (UAS), the »Klassik-Stiftung Weimar«, the »Stiftung Baukultur Thüringen«, and the »Bundesverband für Wohnen und Stadtentwicklung e.V.«.

The press release from the DFG can be found at:
https://www.dfg.de/service/presse/pressemitteilungen/2023/pressemitteilung_nr_45/index.html 

Questions can be directed to Gabriela Oroz, Faculty Marketing Manager for the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, by phone at  +49 (0) 36 43 / 58 31 15 or by e-mail at gabriela.oroz[at]uni-weimar.de