BERLIN.- Founding Director Prof. Guido Spars took office on September 1, 2021. As founding director, Guido Spars is developing a programmatic concept for the Federal Bauakademie Foundation and a strategy for enhancing its profile in the regional, national, and international professional community- along the planning and construction value chain as well as in politics, society, and the general public. Guido Spars will now begin conversations with cooperation partners from the various subsectors of planning and construction and develop a spatial use concept that can serve as the basis for holding an architectural competition for reconstructing the Bauakademie. The new Bauakademie will meet the highest standards of sustainability and become a site of innovative power.

Spars: “A reconstructed Bauakademie building will give us the chance, at this central location, to demonstrate that sustainability is not an empty formula, but can succeed well when form and content are united. The Federal Bauakademie Foundation will establish a Think Tank and a Platform for ideas and innovations pertaining to all aspects of sustainable planning and construction.”

The Think Tank will take a long view on topics such as digitalization, the circular city, health, and housing, then introduce them into the praxis of planning and construction via working groups and associate them with exhibitions and events. The Bauakademie will function as an “academy of academies” and offer institutions engaged in research and knowledge transfer attractive premises for events within a focused contextual framework.

Guido Spars is committed to ensuring the cooperation of all the actors along the value chain: “The people involved in construction still come from different backgrounds and have different value systems. It will be especially exciting to apply the diverse approaches in the working groups productively in order to contribute to a ‘holistic’ view of planning and construction. A common understanding and a unifying voice are an important basis for ensuring the success of the exchange formats.”

As a first step toward establishing the basic concept, the Federal Bauakademie Foundation is filling positions for construction management and four instrumental academic domains: digitalization in planning and construction, sustainability innovation in the building sector, futurology and urban development, and climate change and the circular city. The Bauakademie can be the hub for innovative developments from scientific research that are linked to economic know-how on the market. A Junior Academy is being planned in the medium term.

Spars: “The Bauakademie will make innovations for planning and construction visible and usable in Germany and internationally. This place will enable sustainable development in the building sector to do justice to its outstanding importance. I want the Bauakademie to not only set an example but also serve as a catalyst of modern sustainable construction, and I look forward to inspiring, constructive, and collegial conversations.”

Guido Spars holds an undergraduate degree in economics and a doctorate in engineering and earned his habilitation as an urban and regional economist. During his appointment as founding director of the Federal Bauakademie Foundation, he is on leave from his position as head of the Department of Economics of Planning and Building at the University of Wuppertal. He received his doctorate from the Technical University of Berlin in 2000 and earned his habilitation there in 2007.

The Federal Bauakademie Foundation was founded in January 2019 and, in accordance with its statutes, is responsible for fulfilling the tasks of reconstructing and operating the Bauakademie building on Schinkelplatz in Berlin-Mitte.