DECORATOR Project

DECORATOR aspires to catalyze the circular transformation of the built environment in the Danube Region (DR) by conceiving the region as a real life-laboratory for inquiring into the transformational practices promoted by the project. It addresses circularity as a holistic challenge, encompassing the ecological as well the technical, socio-cultural and the economic domain. The project ties in with the New European Bauhaus initiative in that it pursues circularity and the transitioning towards a sustainable future as an aesthetic rather than exclusively technological project. It approach advanced technologies as enablers to achieve the transformation of the sector. 

The DR constitute a sensitive ecosystem with rivers, basins and snowless mountains providing the daunting imagery of a worsening climate crisis. Challenged by its landscape, the inhabitants of the DR have developed a unique repertoire of knowledge, skills, competences, experiences and problem-solving strategies manifest in their architecture and other cultural artefacts/practices. It is these resources and people’s ability to engage with the materials at hand that are mobilized and systematized in the realization of a new type and vision of danubian building and construction around the concept of circularity; a new type and vision driven by the powers of advanced technologies, engineering, design, crafts, and the creative milieu. 

At its heart, DECORATOR is a strategic policy development and explorative and piloting project. It develops and tests a new model of collaboration and intervention structured around the cradle-to-cradle (C2C) approach (building materials as nutrients in metabolic building cycles and processes designed to prolong quality of raw materials to eliminate idea of waste altogether). A model that breaks professional silos, nurtures collaboration between sectors and functions, forms new alliances between technology and culture, and incorporates social innovation.