By Gudrun Haindlmaier, AIT
“As cities and rural areas across Europe face the mounting pressures of climate change, social fragmentation, and biodiversity loss, the way we design and interact with our environments must evolve. Climate change exacerbates heatwaves, flooding, and habitat destruction, while urbanization often leads to sterile, single-purpose spaces that fail to inspire or connect communities. At the same time, biodiversity is eroding at an alarming rate, threatening the ecosystems that underpin our well-being.
“Socially, public spaces too often reflect inequality, serving only a portion of the population or excluding vulnerable groups. To address these complex, intertwined challenges, we must embrace innovative approaches that merge functionality, ecological restoration, and human-centred design. The integration of Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) and the New European Bauhaus (NEB) offers a visionary pathway for achieving a sustainable, inclusive, and resilient society.
“The NEB principles—sustainability, beauty, and togetherness—align seamlessly with the potential of NBS to address societal challenges while enhancing biodiversity, ecosystem services, and community well-being. By reimagining underutilized public spaces through co-creation, innovation, and local engagement, the combination of NEB and NBS breathes life into areas rendered invisible by time and functionality. It demonstrates that sustainability is not just a technical goal but an opportunity to reconnect people with their natural and cultural heritage, fostering a deep sense of belonging and shared stewardship.
This is one of the core ambitions of the Sleeping Beauty project – to “awaken” the aesthetic and functional value of public spaces by combining NEB’s artistic and cultural sensibilities with NBS’s ecological strategies.
“Through interventions like urban participatory experimentation labs, rain gardens, and biodiversity-enhancing green infrastructure, Sleeping Beauty creates spaces that prioritize both human and non-human well-being.
“Within these multifunctional spaces, NBS harness the power of nature to address environmental and social challenges—such as creating urban wetlands to manage stormwater or planting native species to boost biodiversity—while NEB brings an additional dimension: the pursuit of beauty, inclusivity, and co-creation. Together, they enable us to create multifunctional spaces that are not only resilient to climate impacts but also foster a sense of belonging and cultural identity.
“The project’s innovative approach to co-creation and co-governance is at the core of the activities. By involving citizens, designers, artists, and local authorities in every phase—from ideation to implementation—it ensures that solutions reflect the needs, identities, and aspirations of diverse communities. This participatory model promotes long-term ownership, dismantles silos between disciplines, and enables scalable, adaptable solutions for different climatic and socio-spatial contexts.
“Thereby, the transformative power of beauty is highlighted in a broad range of solutions. Land art installations that reuse local materials will transform underused urban squares into green meeting spaces by planting native vegetation and green wall murals. Local citizens will collectively install rain gardens that manage stormwater while incorporating pollinator-friendly plants that enhance aesthetic appeal.
“The beauty of ‘dark’ landscapes will be embraced at night with low-light installations for nocturnal species, while promoting nighttime activities that engage citizens in a mobile urban experimental lab at a former railway station. Beautiful spaces, rich with biodiversity and cultural significance, foster well-being and resilience by promoting meaningful human-nature connections. By revitalizing neglected urban and rural areas, the project emphasizes the role of aesthetics in enhancing environmental performance, social cohesion, and economic vitality.
“As Europe seeks pathways to achieve its sustainability and resilience goals, initiatives like Sleeping Beauty remind us of the untapped potential lying dormant in our communities. By integrating the creativity of the New European Bauhaus with the regenerative capacity of Nature-Based Solutions, we can craft living spaces that are not only functional but also inspiring. These solutions invite us to imagine a future where beauty, sustainability, and inclusivity become the new norm, a future where every community can awaken its sleeping beauty and thrive.
Gudrun Haindlmaier is a senior scientist and Thematic Group Coordinator within the Center for Innovation Systems and Policy at AIT, she will be the coordinator of the Sleeping Beauty project launching in 2025.
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