New MINDSET for High-Quality European BAUKULTUR: Bridging DIGITAL and CRAFT - Acronym: BuildDigiCraft

Research Project, 2019 – 2022

Today there are huge opportunities for the built environment in the interrelation of the new digital tools, the traditional building craft techniques, the current design practice and the values behind the process of shaping the built environment. The core question of the BuildDigiCraft strategic partnership is the question of how we are shaping the future built environment in a world of growing digitalization and professional specialization.

BuildDigiCraft project aims to embrace the huge opportunities arising from digitalization while at the same time it reconnects the actors (e.g. designers, builders and users) and the projects (e.g. the built environment) with the work qualities of craftsmanship. the overall objective of the BuildDigiCraft project is to establish a European training network for young researchers, teachers and practitioners that promotes innovative teaching approaches for shaping the built environment in the digital age. By addressing the potentials of digitalization and its effects on the built environment, the new teaching approaches will be aimed at enabling the introduction of an imminent and highly necessary cultural and organizational change in the planning and building sector in Europe.

The backbone of the BuildDigiCraft project consists of 4 training programmes, also called Intensive Study Programmes*, or shortly just ISPs. The ISPs are open to early-stage researchers such as PhD and advanced Master level students, as well as to experienced scientists, practitioners and researchers, willing to share their expertise and skills with eager for knowledge participants. 
The ISPs provide new learning opportunities, skills development, and access to information and to state-of-the art research results for all its participants, both learners and teaching staff. Furthermore, they enable students and teachers to work together in multinational and multidisciplinary groups and so benefit from special learning and teaching conditions not available in a single institution.

BuildDigiCraft brings together eight partners from the Baltic Sea region, from Germany, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Sweden and Denmark, all leading universities in the disciplines of the built environment in their countries. The project builds on a previous strategic partnership (2015-2018) focused on interdisciplinary teaching in the field of the built environment and is part of a long-term strategy for sustaining and further developing of the established network.