Key takeaways from INHERIT, EHHUR and Timberhaus workshop at NEB Festival

Titled “Co-creating the Future of Living Heritage, Regenerative Materials and Inclusive Cities”, the workshop brought together 25 participants from diverse backgrounds to explore how the values of the New European Bauhaus (NEB) can be translated into practical solutions for more sustainable, inclusive and people-centred places. Through an adapted Ikigai methodology, participants worked in multidisciplinary groups to address real-life urban challenges from different stakeholder perspectives.

What have we learned through this experience? Discover our key takeaways!

1. Arguing someone else’s position, not just sitting at the same table, is what shifted perspectives
   The role-play went beyond bringing stakeholders together: it required each participant to advocate for a stakeholder perspective that was not their own. Speaking as a resident, public authority, developer, designer, or heritage or environmental representative brought to light trade-offs that often remain hidden when participants reason solely from their own disciplinary or institutional standpoint. By stepping into another actor’s role, participants gained a deeper understanding of the motivations, constraints and considerations that may lie behind different decisions and positions.
2. The adapted Ikigai methodology worked as a stress-test for ideas
   By placing each idea at the intersection of what the community values, what people and the planet need, what the disciplines in the room can deliver and what is viable to build and maintain, the method filtered ideas rather than multiplying them – a proposal strong on one dimension had to prove itself on the other three.
3. Re-framing the challenge together mattered more than agreeing on a solution
   In multidisciplinary groups, much of the value emerged before any solutions were proposed: through collectively redefining the real-life challenge as different actors brought forward their perspectives, experiences and priorities. This process revealed the multidimensional nature of the issue and helped establish a shared understanding of what truly needed to be addressed.
4. What the group did not agree on was as revealing as what they did
   While consensus quickly emerged around a shared direction – one that was people-centred, sustainable and inclusive – the most valuable discussions arose from disagreements over the trade-offs involved in making that vision a reality. Questions around costs, implementation speed, decision-making authority, and what should be preserved or transformed exposed the complexity of real-world decision-making. These moments provided valuable insights into group dynamics, negotiation processes and the way power relationships were navigated, making the workshop’s conclusions grounded in realistic deliberation rather than aspirational consensus.
5. Read across three projects, the NEB values behaved as one system, not three separate tracks
   Using EHHUR, Timberhaus and INHERIT as complementary lenses enabled participants to understand the NEB values as interdependent choices rather than parallel themes. Discussions revealed that advancing one dimension often required balancing or negotiating with the others, making visible the synergies and trade-offs inherent in real-world decision-making. This systems perspective encouraged participants to move beyond viewing sustainability, aesthetics and inclusion as isolated objectives and instead recognise how decisions in one area inevitably shape outcomes in the others.

Conclusions
The workshop demonstrated that the NEB is not simply a framework of three independent values – beautiful, sustainable and inclusive – but a way of approaching complex societal challenges through integrated and participatory decision-making.

Rather than seeking immediate consensus or predefined solutions, the process created the conditions for participants to understand complexity together. Through role-playing, collective problem framing, open negotiation of trade-offs and the integration of complementary perspectives from EHHUR, Timberhaus and INHERIT, participants moved beyond their own disciplinary and institutional viewpoints to recognise the interdependencies between the NEB values and the actors responsible for delivering them.

The workshop showed that implementing the NEB requires more than balancing sustainability, inclusion and aesthetics as separate objectives; it requires understanding how decisions in one dimension inevitably shape the others. By making assumptions explicit, revealing competing priorities and encouraging participants to reason from perspectives other than their own, the process fostered a shared understanding of how more balanced, legitimate and implementable decisions can emerge.

Ultimately, the workshop demonstrated that the NEB is best understood not as a destination, but as a collaborative process for navigating complexity and co-creating places that are simultaneously more sustainable, inclusive and beautiful.

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Cover photo by ICONS