About

Our vision for a regenerative built environment

Our vision

Our goal is a future in which buildings, cities, and landscapes proactively contribute to climate restoration and have a positive impact on our planet and all its inhabitants. We stand for a profound systemic change: the transition to bio- and geo-based materials, circular construction, reuse of existing buildings, recycling, the restoration of biodiversity, and cities and landscapes as natural carbon sinks.

In order to re-entangle the built environment with the Earth's natural systems, we must:

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  1. Invest in nature;
  2. Expand the system boundaries of design and governance, and the temporal and spatial scales of our agency;
  3. Enhance rather than deplete biodiversity;
  4. Sink carbon by construction;
  5. Capture natural energy rather than extracting fossil fuels;

Read more in our Charter

Our mission

Our mission is to transform buildings and human settlements from drivers of climate and societal crises into creative forces for systemic regeneration. Only a complete systemic overhaul of our built environment will prevent a global climate catastrophe.

The cities we live in today were formed using extractive and environmentally harmful methods. If we continue to build as we have, the environmental and social impacts will be devastating. Yet increased urbanization is inevitable: 1.6 billion people live in multidimensional poverty today, and by 2050, another 2.5 billion humans will need housing. Close to sixty percent of the buildings needed in the coming century have yet to be built, the majority in the Global South.

But changing the way we construct and approach the built environment also represents one of our best and greatest opportunities for systemic restoration: If built regeneratively, our cities can act as carbon sinks and create equitable development opportunities. We can do more than become climate neutral—we can be climate positive, create new value systems and promote equitable societies.

Read about our Solutions

Our history

2024

Expanded the team to more than 50 thinkers & makers.

Meet our team

2023

Licensing of a new earth block and launch of first Bauhaus Earth Fellowship Program together with Experimental.

2022

"Reconstructing the Future for People and Planet Conference", hosted by Bauhaus Earth and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, at the Vatican.

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2021

On the occasion of ‘Earth Day’, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber

holds a Federal Press Conference on 21 April.

2020

Registration as a non-profit company

and seed funding from Laudes Foundation.

2019

Signing of the Caputh Declaration &

Laying of the foundation for Bauhaus Earth.

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The role of the built environment and the climate crisis

The built environment is the elephant in the climate room. It is responsible for at least 30 per cent of global waste generation, 40 per cent of all CO2 emissions and more than 50 per cent of global resource consumption - and the trend is rising. And yet, the role of the built environment in the climate crisis is often overlooked.

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Donors and funders

Partners