How does sustainability manifest itself in everyday university life – and how can we strengthen it? That’s what the Engaged Mittelstrasse project is investigating at the University of Bern’s Mittelstrasse 43 campus. Mittelstrasse 43, located in the heart of Bern’s Länggasse neighbourhood, is a lively site housing institutes and centres (including CDE), as well as offices, a library, and a bistro. It’s also a heritage sandstone building with a long history of use.
Engaged Mittelstrasse is a participatory project aimed at making the building and its courtyard more sustainable and inclusive – and at strengthening the overall culture of sustainability. It involves collaboration between students and staff from operations, teaching, and research, ensuring that a wide range of perspectives are taken into account.
A living laboratory for change and sustainability in action
The project is comprised of two distinct components that link cultural learning and physical change:
- A real-world experiment that aims to test new forms of collaboration, promote joint learning, and establish transdisciplinary spaces at universities (RealTransform).
- The redesign of the Mittelstrasse 43 courtyard, currently an urban heat island, into a biodiversity-rich and climate-friendly space that can be used as a common area, for educational purposes, or as a meeting place. The aim is to offer low-barrier access to nature and spark a new relationship with the neighbourhood (Green Campus).
While the Green Campus component is responsible for the design of the space – that is, its physical transformation – RealTransform lays the foundations for a sustainable attitude and collaboration. Together, the two components create a living laboratory for change and active sustainability at Mittelstrasse 43.
