The IBA’27-School is an annual one-week workshop intended as a reflective, critical tool for everyone involved in the IBA process. The student workshop will continue to accompany the process until the opening of the building exhibition as a cooperation project between the four faculties of architecture and urban planning in the Stuttgart region, the architects chamber Baden-Württemberg and the IBA 2027 StadtRegion Stuttgart. In doing so, it will focus on the topics of the IBA and thus be able to respond to current developments progressively and sometimes critically.

The future will be bright and shiny
was the motto of the second IBA’27-School 2018, which took place from 7th to 12th October 2018 in Stuttgart. Around 80 students from Argentina, Chile, Germany, Malawi and Austria attended and worked to the question of how Stuttgart and the metropolitan area will look in 2050.

Thinking about the future of 2050, also means to think about the development of our society. There are so many opportunities of what our lives could look like in 30 years – that’s why 2018^th IBA’27-School was all about big visions. To shape our own bright and shiny future we searched for visionary ideas that address the major issues of our time at specific sites in the Stuttgart metropolitan Region. The eight different locations in and around Stuttgart are examples of places with high transformation potential and particular local difficulties.

The week started with a World Café Workshop to collect and discuss concrete countermeasures for dealing with the various challenges of today's cities. By exploring the sites together with a local expert, the students and teachers got a better insight into the specific potentials and problems of the sites. After a week of workshops, breakfast lectures, design work, the results of the week are colorful, and the issues discussed are very interesting.

For example, how do technological developments and digitization affect urban structures? Will large housing estates meet the requirements for dense housing communities in the future? Which economic and mobility models can improve supply and production in urban areas? In particular, the public space was a central theme in many projects, in which students interpreted social developments and at the same time made the high significance of their visions visible. All work was presented on Friday night in a public event and presented in a two-week exhibition at St. Mary's Church.