Floating University Berlin Through (Rearticulated) Three Ecologies: More-than-Living Ecosystem,Assemblage of Tectonics,and Pedagogical Network

Abstract

This article offers a comprehensive investigation of Floating University Berlin (FUB) as a habitable praxis situated within a post-industrial wetland and operating beyond the institutional boundaries of formal higher education. It asks how FUB articulates ecosystemic, spatial, performative, and even micropolitical forms of divergence under neoliberal academic conditions. Methodologically, the study examines FUB as a primary case in juxtaposition with the Institute for Lightweight Structures, enabling a critical assessment of how spatial and organisational configurations mediate learning, interaction, and collective agency. Mobilising Félix Guattari’s “three ecologies”—environment, social relations, and human subjectivity—as analytical axes, the article rearticulates them as a more-than-living ecosystem, assemblages of tectonics, and a pedagogical network. This framework structures a multi-layered “meta-narrative” that integrates theoretical analysis with visual and spatial interpretation. Through a layered cartography composed of curated quotations, atmospheric collages, mapping-based inferences, and diagrammatic expressions, the study renders entangled relations and de-hierarchised processes sustaining FUB’s pedagogical universe. Within this meta-narrative, “flows of identifiers” trace methods, tactics, qualities, and positionalities, while “impalpable frameworks” foreground accumulative architectural interventions, participatory approaches, multispecies associations, and experimental, critical-compassionate modes of learning. By advancing the concept of habitable praxis as an ecosystemic and spatial mode of pedagogical production, the article contributes an original analytical model for understanding learning environments as dynamic, generative, and open to transformation.

Prologue

This article undertakes a comprehensive investigation of the Floating University Berlin (FUB)—a habitable praxis that has carved out a for-itself (pour-soi) within a post-industrial wetland located beyond the university campus, and that is characterised by ecologically attentive, participatory, and inclusive activities and interventions—as a compelling example of alternative pedagogical practices positioned outside the contemporary boundaries of formal higher education. The article addresses a central question: how might an informal, critical-compassionate pedagogical practice operating beyond institutional frameworks articulate an ecosystemic, spatial, and performative forms of divergence—or even a micropolitical resistance to the logics of academia shaped by neoliberal mechanisms?

This inquiry unfolds through a juxtaposition with the Institute for Lightweight Structures (ILS), ¹ which initiated its studio-based practices within the political climate of the 1960s student movements (on the dawn of the ’68 uprisings) and has sustained them ever since. The rationale for this juxtaposition lies in a shared yet divergent ethos: both practices define themselves as laboratories of pedagogical experimentation, yet they differ fundamentally in their existential territories, tectonic configurations (architectural, material, and structural), and institutional affiliations. We are drawn to this dyad because it produces a productive tension: FUB operates as a post-institutional, ecologically entangled pedagogical universe situated on the overlooked urban fringe of a decommissioned airport, materialised through pavilion-like units constructed with lightweight materials and flexible processes; whereas ILS emerged as a radical yet campus-embedded pedagogical practice housed within Frei Otto’s tent-like structure.

The lens of juxtaposing ILS and FUB enables a critical examination of how spatial and organisational decisions mediate the politics of learning, how architecture shapes pedagogical atmosphere, and how strategies of resistance or adaptation to systemic pressures evolve. Framed alongside ILS, FUB is understood here as a dynamic assemblage of ecological, architectural, and subjective production—constituting fertile ground for assessing its overlaps, divergences, and transformative potentials. The article further asks how a pedagogical network, when situated differently within or beyond the university, might enact alternative logics of learning, creativity, and collective life.

The article’s methodology is shaped by a critical and holistic evaluation of the contextual and performative actions observed within the multispecies and multicultural ecosystem ² of FUB, juxtaposed with ILS. These actions are examined through non-orthodox pedagogical processes and their spatial and representational productions. The subheadings of the case study are structured through Félix Guattari’s “three ecologies,” which he summarises as “environment, social relations, and human subjectivity.” Within the context of this article, these are rearticulated as a “more-than-living ecosystem, assemblages of tectonics, and pedagogical network.” Guattari’s framework, selected for its emphasis on relational subjectivity and processual entanglements, provides a productive conceptual lens for articulating pedagogical practices that exceed formal and bounded models of education.

The case study, which concentrates on FUB in juxtaposition with ILS under the subheadings of the rearticulated three ecologies, culminates in a multi-layered meta-narrative of the pedagogical universe at FUB—one that reveals both its theoretical grounding, and visual and spatial articulations. As interpreters, we articulate FUB’s situated and entangled learning ecosystem through a layered cartography composed of curated quotations, atmospheric collages, mapping-based inferences, and diagrammatic expressions. Each element within the meta-narrative functions as a conceptual device that renders visible the otherwise imperceptible patterns of relations and processes through which FUB’s pedagogical network operates.

Within the meta-narrative, three “flows of identifiers” symbolise methods, tactics, and strategies of action, qualities derived from the surrounding wetland ecology, and positionalities emerging within pedagogical practices. Each flow traces a distinct trajectory within FUB’s habitable praxis. Interwoven with these flows are four impalpable frameworks, which highlight accumulative architectural interventions, participatory and interconnected approaches, multispecies ecosystemic associations, and experimental and critical-compassionate modes of learning unfolding within FUB’s existential territory.

The meta-narrative does not function as a post-production representation of FUB. Rather, through the translation of FUB’s habitable praxis into a multi-layered narrative structure, interpretations emerge from comprehensive reflections on pedagogical and spatial operations, as well as from de-hierarchised interactions and alliances among more-than-living constituents. The concluding inference of the article suggests that performative actions and events that diverge from neoliberal mechanisms, resist fixed hierarchies, and unsettle bounded learning models sustain FUB’s pedagogical universe as dynamic, generative, and open to transformation.

Floating University Berlin—Juxtaposed With Institute for Lightweight Structures—and (Rearticulated) Three Ecologies

As a contemporary counterpart to the Institute for Lightweight Structures (ILS, Institut für Leichtbau Entwerfen und Konstruieren—ILEK; Stuttgart/Germany, 1964–1991)—offering approaches that both converge and diverge in significant respects—the Floating University Berlin (FUB) presents an illuminating ground for analysis. While ILS positioned its physical presence as an anomaly within the university campus—composed of structurally adaptive components responsive to shifting conditions, needs, and activities, and programmatically conceived as a participatory, experimental, and playful research environment—FUB asserted its independence from formal academic structures by situating itself within a rainwater retention basin at a decommissioned airport. Although ILS continued to operate under different directors following Otto’s retirement in 1991, this article limits its historical focus to the 1964–1991 period during Otto’s leadership. The juxtaposition of the spatial and organisational dimensions of FUB with the formative years of ILS therefore, takes into account historical conjunctures and context-specific variables.

The theoretical framework for this juxtaposed inquiry draws on Félix Guattari’s concept of the “three ecologies.” In Guattari’s formulation, ecology is understood as “a way of questioning subjectivity and capitalist power formations in their entirety.” He distinguishes three ecological planes: environment, social relations, and human subjectivity. These planes share a set of foundational principles. As Guattari (2000) writes,

Each existential territory we encounter is not given as an in-itself (en-soi), closed upon itself, but rather as a for-itself (pour-soi)—precarious, finite, singular. Such territories may either devolve into stratified, death-bound repetitions or open processually through a praxis that renders them “habitable” for a human project. Although they emerge from a common ethico-aesthetic discipline, each ecological plane differentiates itself through the specific practices that characterise it. Through continuous and renewed processes of singularisation—what Guattari calls heterogenesis—individuals within these ecologies must simultaneously become more united and increasingly differentiated. (p. 53)

The condition under which interacting, more-than-living constituents—engaged in various forms of being-together ³ and alliance within a field of assemblages—can preserve their subjective structures may be interpreted through Guattari’s concept of “heterogenesis,” which he describes as a continuous process of singularisation. Guattari (2000) defines heterogenesis as:

an active, immanent singularisation of subjectivity, as opposed to a transcendent, universalising, and reductionist homogenisation. Heterogeneity, then, is first and foremost an expression of desire—always in the process of adapting, transforming, and modifying itself in relation to its environment. Perpetually recomposing subjectivity and praxis is only conceivable in a setting where each of its constituents can move entirely freely and within absolute respect for their temporalities—time for comprehending or refusing to comprehend, time to unify or to be autonomous, time of identification or of the most acute differences. (p. 90)

Within an ontological ground in which subjectivity is preserved through the continuous re-production of singularisation, heterogenesis functions as both catalyst and scaffolding for distinctive ecological scenarios. In some of these scenarios, most constituents mutually reinforce one another; in others, certain elements are strengthened while others weaken. The primary condition for heterogenesis is the complete autonomy of each constituent to operate according to its own mode of being and movement.

From the perspective of the pedagogical universe, heterogenesis corresponds to a divergence from the standardised, output-oriented, and tightly controlled policies of higher education systems shaped by neoliberal mechanisms. Instead, it aligns with inclusive, emancipatory, and progressive practices. Within such an environment, heterogeneity emerges through unpredictable, surprising—even fantastical—encounters. These relationalities resist assimilation and allow more-than-living constituents to transform within the educational space without sacrificing their singular and situated ontologies. As articulated by Deleuze and Guattari (1987), micropolitics is “defined not by scale but by the nature of the process (molecular/quantum flow),” operating through everyday interactions, spontaneous encounters, and provisional alliances that open spaces for alternative modes of living, relating, and learning. It is inseparable from the continuous production of subjectivity and from assemblages—temporary, contingent constellations of heterogeneous elements including bodies, spatial forms, discourses, materials, affects, and tools. Within the scope of this article, micropolitics refers to the molecular operations of power, desire, and (subjective) becoming that unfold beneath or beyond institutionalised pedagogical structures.

While ILS seeks to cultivate an experimental, collective, and playful pedagogical practice—despite remaining anomalously embedded within a university campus—FUB situates itself within a post-industrial wetland on the overlooked fringes of the city. There, through temporally accreted spatial structures and solidarity-oriented, nomadic events, FUB develops informal pedagogies and enacts micropolitical forms of resistance. To establish a conceptual ground for analysing these two practices together, we adapt and rearticulate Guattari’s “three ecologies” as three analytical layers: a more-than-living ecosystem, assemblages of tectonics, and a pedagogical network. Within this framework, FUB and ILS constitute an ecological dyad composed of autonomous constituents in motion—assemblages in which heterogenesis can be observed, and where overlaps and divergences emerge at both internal and relational levels.

Within the scope of the rearticulated three ecologies, the “more-than-living ecosystem” expands Guattari’s environmental register beyond organic life to include infrastructural agencies and material mediations. At FUB, human and non-human constituents—from reedbeds to scaffolding—collectively produce a pedagogical environment grounded in multispecies interaction, collective relationality, and spatial materiality. “Assemblages of tectonics” redefine social relations through the material and collaborative acts of constructing, dismantling, and reconfiguring space. At FUB, social bonds are formed through participatory and ad hoc architectural practices in which heterogeneous constituents—bodies, materials, and forms of knowledge—are entangled through situated acts of making. Finally, the “pedagogical network” reconceptualises subjectivity as a decentralised and emergent process shaped through spatial reconfigurations, collective inquiry, and situated engagement with the site. Rather than relying on institutional hierarchies and standardising educational models, learning at FUB unfolds through interconnected practices aligned with Guattari’s heterogenesis-grounded vision of subjectivity as relational, processual, and in flux.

FUB—Juxtaposed With ILS—Within a (Rearticulated) Framework of Three Ecologies: A More-Than-Living Ecosystem

ILS was founded under the coordination of Frei Otto and articulated its architectural identity through the tent-like structure with which Otto became closely associated. Initially constructed on the main campus of the University of Stuttgart as a full-scale mock-up for the German Pavilion at Expo ’67 Montreal, the structure subsequently established its own existential territory—what Guattari would describe as a for-itself (pour-soi)—within the Vaihingen campus of the University of Stuttgart. There, it was situated amid engineering institutes dedicated to materials testing, automotive and engine technologies, energy systems, and combustion research (Figure 1). As Fabricius (2022) characterises it, the tent-like structure functioned as “an anomaly—a curiosity or oddity among its technoscientific neighbouring buildings, a thorn among the institutions of the positive sciences.” This structure defined not only the provocative contextual position of ILS but also its architectural subjectivity. Constructed within a wooded area and designed to blend into the landscape to the point of near disappearance, the building articulated this subjectivity spatially.

Figure 1.

Satellite Imagery Showing the Institute for Lightweight Structures from Multiple Altitudes, Located within the Vaihingen Campus of the University of Stuttgart and Surrounded by Engineering Institutes Focused on Materials Testing, Vehicle and Engine Technologies, Energy Systems, and Combustion Research (Google Earth, 2023).

By contrast, FUB—programmed, designed, and implemented by raumlaborberlin, ⁴ a collective engaged in research-based experimental architectural practices—declares a deliberate rupture from both institutionalised university structures and the spatial logic of the campus. Through its organisational modes and physical emplacement within a post-industrial wetland—a previously neglected and overlooked urban site—FUB seeks to establish a new existential territory (Figure 2).

Figure 2.

Satellite Imagery of the Floating University Berlin from Multiple Altitudes and Dates, Situated as a Constellation of Small Islands Within the Rainwater Retention Basin—Formerly Part of Tempelhof Airport and Now Classified as a Post-Industrial Wetland (Google Earth, 2020–2025).

We examine FUB’s decision to situate itself—as a for-itself (pour-soi), in Guattari’s terms—within a post-industrial wetland as its existential territory through the conceptual lens of Anna Tsing’s formulation of “life in capitalist ruins.” According to Tsing, the precarity, destruction, and abandonment observed in ecosystems should not automatically be interpreted as signs of loss or extinction. On the contrary, “even places declared dead and assessed as ruins can still harbour vitality and movement; abandoned sites of extraction may at times become fertile grounds for the emergence of new multispecies and multicultural forms of life” (Tsing, 2015). Such spaces can therefore function as generative thresholds and situated ecologies, creating the conditions for alternative modes of living, thinking, and encountering to take root. Drawing on the matsutake mushroom’s unexpected capacity to flourish in disturbed landscapes, Tsing (2015) suggests that its intense emergence enables us to “explore the ruin that has become our shared dwelling.”

A similar process unfolded with the decommissioning of Tempelhof Airport and the subsequent abandonment of its rainwater retention basin. As rainwater gradually accumulated and reedbeds began to form, the neglected infrastructural zone transformed into a post-industrial wetland—an environment in which alternative and multispecies life forms could emerge. Within this context, the ecological catalyst analogous to the matsutake mushroom in Tsing’s account is the reedbed. “Reedbeds provide nesting grounds for birds, amphibians, ducks, and insects; hiding places for foxes, and drinking water for bees, bacteria, fungi, and protozoa. They become a primary structural support for many species—including endangered ones—within the rainwater basin” (Floating e.V., 2023b, p. 4).

Identified as a catalytic ecological agent, the reedbed becomes a metaphor for FUB’s emergence: resilient and generative. Formed within the post-industrial wetland and hosting collective living practices among multispecies entities—ranging from living organisms across diverse species and scales to larvae and microplastics—this generative threshold operates as both a material and symbolic catalyst for FUB’s emplacement in the basin. Just as reedbeds reclaim disused infrastructural space to sustain diverse forms of life, FUB reclaims pedagogical space to host non-normative and transdisciplinary engagements. The transformation of the site—from utilitarian infrastructure to collective commons—illustrates how ecological conditions and educational imagination may co-produce alternative futures. This spatial choice signals a deliberate divergence—a form of micropolitical resistance—from the rigid institutional structures of higher education shaped by neoliberal mechanisms. Instead, FUB aligns itself with a pedagogical practice that is systemically entangled with the surrounding ecology, foregrounding participation, process, and collective becoming over output-driven metrics and institutional standardisation.

The “Climavore” project, composed of research initiatives—including site-sensitive installations, performances, and representational practices—as well as design studios focused on climate change and food systems, critically engages with the typology of the post-industrial wetland. In a manner comparable to the implementation of FUB within the Tempelhof rainwater retention basin, Merve Anıl et al. (2023) reflect on such spaces through reference to Anna Tsing:

post-industrial wetlands—emerging with increasing density among the remnants of capitalism—are assemblages composed of political, legal, economic, and social strata. Resistant to measurement and registration, these wetland ecologies harbour political alliances positioned against normative structures and sustain autonomous social networks. They encourage thinking beyond binary oppositions such as wet–dry or clean–dirty.

FUB deliberately strikes through the word “university” in its name, foregrounding its floating and nomadic qualities instead. It settles within the disused rainwater retention basin of Tempelhof Airport through small composite structures that form scattered islets. These islets are sometimes connected by walkways laid across the water, and at other times require movement through muddy terrain, generating a circulation network that oscillates between stability and exposure. This settlement pattern inscribes the space with a spirit of precarity, mobility, and temporality. In time, FUB becomes an engaged constituent of the post-industrial wetland where—“despite being filled with murky water and situated within a concrete basin—the environment is described as paradisiacal due to its rich diversity of plants, birds, amphibians, and insects” (Url-2). In doing so, it delineates a heterogenetic ecological system that resists both abandonment and time-dependent deterioration. Within this system, more-than-living constituents continuously reconstitute their subjectivities through situated and temporally autonomous processes. Exceeding binary logics such as clean–dirty or usable–waste, the site enables FUB to embrace precarity—manifested through spontaneous encounters, non-linear strategies, and uncertain outcomes. The basin thus becomes not only a material ground for FUB’s architectural and programmatic configurations but also a pedagogical milieu for experimental learning rooted in situated ecology.

In “The Floating Community Newspaper: The Reeder Issue #01,” ⁵ published annually by FUB since 2023, Grambow characterises the floating entities that inhabit the basin and gradually become integrated into the FUB complex as dynamic and reciprocally entangled constituents of a more-than-living ecosystem. These “floatings” are described as entities that “scatter their spores everywhere, always precarious, temporary, marginalised, and disruptive” (Grambow, 2023). Drawing on the writings of Grambow and Tsing, we offer a concluding reflection on the process through which FUB and all those who engage with it become entangled with a more-than-living ecosystem (Figure 3, fragment from the meta-narrative [see Figure 6]).

Figure 3.

“More-than-Living Ecosystem” Based Fragment From the Multi-Layered Meta-Narrative of the Pedagogical Universe at Floating University Berlin.

Within FUB, this habitable praxis has gradually rendered the basin’s often discomforting yet idiosyncratic sensorial elements—“the mud layer living atop the concrete, the scent of compost, the tactile sensation of wet wood”—more familiar and “comfortably bearable” for team members, community collaborators, and visitors (Grambow, 2023). Through this transformation, the precarious and temporary members and practices of FUB have come to coexist with the unsettling multispecies and multicultural forms of the post-industrial wetland. In Anna Tsing’s terms, they form a “contaminated diversity”: a situated mode of collective coexistence. According to Tsing (2015), “contaminated diversity is relational and ever-changing. It has no self-contained units, its units are encounter-based collaborations. Without self-contained individuals or groups, no one can secure their self-interests independently of the encounter” (p. 31). From this perspective, the survival, exploration, and learning practices of FUB and the wetland’s constituents unfold through a dynamic, collective, and anti-individualistic entanglement.

FUB—Juxtaposed With ILS—Within a (Rearticulated) Framework of Three Ecologies: Assemblages of Tectonics

The primary object-based constituent shaping ILS was its iconic tent-like structure. The design process of this structure unfolded in alignment with the experimental and playful pedagogical methods practised within the institute—that is, with its habitable praxis. Physical models were developed using materials such as “gauze, film, and soap.” The multi-layered structure consisted of: an inner tension-cable system “suspended from foundation-embedded perimeter cables”, a middle layer composed of a “prestressed glass frame” and a laminated timber shell responsive to loads and remarkably thin in section, and, externally (excluding glazed portions), a layered cladding of “fiber cement (eternit) tiles supported by a mineral wool insulation layer” (Url-3). As a result, the tectonic language of ILS was defined by unconventional and atypical uses of fundamental construction materials—steel, wood, and glass—pushing their structural limits in terms of strength and flexibility.

The interior space of ILS, designed by Frei Otto, “contains no sharply defined divisions or functional segregations.” Nevertheless, it constitutes an integrated spatial environment capable of accommodating participants at various scales and supporting diverse modes of work and activity within its performative framework. It also responds to environmental control variables such as lighting and thermal comfort. That ILS, which “began its activities with only six students,” reached approximately “seventy students by 1971—comprised of young architects from around the world interested in alternative pedagogical practices”—demonstrates the necessity of spatial flexibility. This development was made possible through its inclusive participation policy and the “institute’s reputation for open education and experimentation” (Fabricius, 2022).

Accordingly, the mezzanine floor of ILS can be rapidly transformed into an archival or recording environment by drawing blackout curtains and adjusting spotlights and recording equipment. Likewise, a niche used for internal meetings can be converted into a seminar or presentation area through the installation of a projection screen and the arrangement of movable seating—extending outdoors when necessary. This spatial configuration enables performative flexibility within the programmatic setup: movable partitions, level differences, and mezzanines allow “research and exploration groups to expand and contract throughout their processes, while collective events such as seminars and meetings can frequently extend into the open air” (Fabricius, 2022).

As Tsoukala (2017) observes,

architectural approaches that blur the boundaries between building elements and spatial components—between building and ground, wall and ceiling, interior and exterior—strip space of predefined hierarchies while simultaneously provoking spatial imaginaries and stirring up attitudes that enable drifting, transitional, and reversible spatial conditions.

In this sense, “all spatial functions required for the experimental and participatory pedagogical operations of ILS can be performed under a single roof, without predetermined or hierarchical relationships between spaces” and without reliance on permanent partitions. This condition not only ensures operational and programmatic flexibility but also enables de-hierarchised interactions among the living constituents of the space (Büyüktopcu & Şentürer, 2025).

When examining the architectonic character and structural system of the buildings that constitute the FUB complex—constructed within a rainwater retention basin in a post-industrial wetland—three primary material constituents can be identified. First, all structures rest upon metal scaffolding systems that function as load-bearing frameworks. Second, the surfaces and furnishings that define programmatic spaces and volumes are articulated through plywood or wooden elements. These range from stage platforms and stepped seating to the circulation networks connecting the structures; from sliding panels facilitating natural ventilation, daylight control, and solar shading to furniture responding to interior needs. Third, the membrane—formed through pneumatic, inflatable, or tensile systems—serves either as roofing or as an outer shell. In funnel-like configurations, it also enables rainwater collection and rain harvest within the basin.

Through the variations and combinations of metal scaffolding systems, plywood or wooden elements, and membranes, FUB constructs its own distinctive and subjective material universe (Figure 4, fragment from the meta-narrative [see Figure 6]). Architecturally, both ILS and FUB employ lightweight and flexible materials, yet they do so in fundamentally different ways. ILS’s tent-like structure pushed the limits of conventional construction materials—wood, glass, and steel—while consolidating diverse programmatic functions beneath a single, transformable roof, thereby producing a unified and performative interior environment. In contrast, FUB disperses its pavilion-like elements across the post-industrial wetland, embracing distributed temporality, weathered materiality, and ad- hoc/temporary construction practices. Whereas the ILS structure stood out as an anomaly among technoscientific institutes on campus, the FUB complex integrates into the ecology of the basin, forming a modest and inconspicuous pedagogical habitat.

Figure 4.

“Assemblages of Tectonics” Based Fragment From the Multi-Layered Meta-Narrative of the Pedagogical Universe at Floating University Berlin.

When considered as a whole—the construction process, architectonic language, and material universe of FUB—it concretises the conditions Guattari attributes to the notion of the for-itself (pour-soi): precariousness or fragility, finitude, and singularity. Matter of fact that would ordinarily be categorised as degradation or ageing—such as the formation of corrosion, patina, or rust layers on metal surfaces through atmospheric exposure, the gradual loosening or creaking of joints between metal and wood over time and use, the drying and cracking of timber continuously exposed to sunlight, the fading of membrane and reed components, the partial flooding of the complex due to climatic events during certain periods of the year, or the gradual submersion and burial of structures through the engulfing action of mud—all become constitutive elements of FUB’s ecological and temporal life cycle.

Designed as a temporary campus intended to operate for a limited duration, FUB was realised under conditions of a low budget and rapid construction. It was conceived to allow adaptation and reconfiguration for future uses while adhering to the principle of minimal intervention into the existing more-than-living ecosystem. In this respect, FUB follows a constructional process open to heterogenesis—understood as the continual and renewed reproduction of subjectivity, singularisation, and habitable praxis. Consistent with its independent, solidaristic, and inclusive organisational modes, FUB articulates an architectonic language grounded in the logic of assemblage and marked by an emphasis on incompletion and temporality.

The term assemblage as used here refers not merely to a layered and heterogeneous architectural representation but to a relational structuring grounded in the theoretical formulations of Bruno Latour and Anna Tsing. The FUB complex hosts unforeseen interactions and dynamic collaborations emerging from the collective interplay of heterogeneous (thus assemblage-forming) more-than-living elements, agencies, and forces, in the sense articulated within Latour’s actor-network theory (Latour 2005). Similarly, in Tsing’s (2015) account, assemblages “not only bring together life forms in open-ended ways—they also produce them. In this process, patterns of unintentional coordination emerge within assemblages.”

By activating its critical-compassionate pedagogical praxis from the construction phase onward, FUB embedded “collaborative and experimental learning, knowledge exchange, and the formation of transdisciplinary networks that challenge conventional urban routines and institutional habits” into its very making.

During the construction of its campus—including learning spaces, workshops, an auditorium, a laboratory tower dedicated to experimental water filtration, as well as a kitchen, bar, and sanitary facilities—it collaborated with students and educators from Berlin, and also Europe, and across the world.

In contrast to the selectively inclusive composition of conventional universities—typically structured around enrolled students, tenured faculty, and a limited number of invited participants—FUB welcomed “students and scholars from over twenty international universities” during its limited operational period between April and September 2018 (Url-2). Thus, the FUB complex functioned not merely as a host for events and activities within its boundaries; through its architectonic language, its multispecies and multicultural inclusivity, and its strategies of emergent assemblage and micropolitical resistance, it assumed an active role in catalysing new pedagogical and ecological approaches, as well as alternative spatial and performative modes of praxis.

FUB—Juxtaposed With ILS—Within a (Rearticulated) Framework of Three Ecologies: Pedagogical Network

Whereas in previous axes of juxtaposition, ILS and FUB diverged in specific respects, their most pronounced convergence emerges in their pedagogical practices, as both define themselves as laboratories. At ILS, the laboratory environment is centred on the

“production of physical models and prototypes and their documentation through diverse methods. This involved a hands-on mode of learning supported by unconventional materials—such as eggs, balloons, or shaving foam—as well as technical equipment, including cameras and sensors. Together, these elements fostered a playful, joyful and collaborative atmosphere of experimentation” that foregrounded collective inquiry (Fabricius, 2022).

Rather than being a conjunctural or short-lived enthusiasm, ILS has endured as a functioning academic institution embedded within formal higher education. Although ILS maintains an eccentric and occasionally whimsical position relative to its surrounding institutes, it nevertheless chose to establish its for-itself (pour-soi) within the university campus. This decision can be associated with the revolutionary and progressive political atmosphere of the 1960s—particularly the solidarity-based and student-led movements that sought to democratise, equalise, liberate, and render higher education more participatory, at times extending to university occupations when deemed necessary.

In contrast, FUB rejects both the institutional university and its homogenised campus model, which it understands as operating within a framework shaped by neoliberal mechanisms in the contemporary period. According to Elarji and Michels (2021), FUB seeks to transcend a model in which the creative potential of the university’s pedagogical universe is instrumentalised “for economic purposes,” and instead redirect that “creativity toward the concerns of the commons.” This orientation signals a micropolitical form of resistance grounded in heterogenesis—understood as the active and continuous reproduction of subjectivity—and in a habitable praxis enacted through interactions among living constituents. Believing in the necessity of “opening up space to reimagine the university beyond the entrepreneurial paradigm” ⁶ —a paradigm that has largely held contemporary universities captive—FUB topographically situates itself in an underexplored and often overlooked site within the collective memory of the city’s inhabitants.

Establishing itself as a for-itself (pour-soi) in this context, FUB operates as “an urban laboratory, seeking a visionary outlook toward an uncertain future.” It describes this laboratory as “a place where one learns to engage, to embrace complexity, to navigate entanglements in the world, and to imagine and create alternative life forms.” The pedagogical laboratory is positioned around this question: “How can cities today cope with the risks and opportunities activated by global warming, resource scarcity, superdiversity, and hyper-accelerated development?” Within its micropolitical context, this question becomes a point of departure for exploring “new forms of urban practice” (Url-2).

FUB articulates its pedagogical orientation in the booklet “Learnscapes 2023: Unsealing Floating.” The act of unsealing floating, which forms the booklet’s subtitle, is described as carrying a “liberatory and radical” core. As a macropolitical reference point, FUB recalls the slogan of the 1968 uprisings: “Sous les pavés, la plage! (Beneath the paving stones, the beach!).” Within its laboratory environment, situated learning is framed through the principles of “un-, re-, and co-learning.” In performative terms, and grounded in micropolitical resistance, this act of unsealing is articulated through practices such as “questioning established planning processes, transgressing institutional boundaries and entrenched modes of learning, developing new methods of practice-based knowledge production, and imagining and designing alternative futures and narratives” (Floating e.V., 2023a).

Following its construction, the pedagogical activities and performative acts programmed within FUB were enacted in ways that were ecologically interactive, empathetic in tone, and inclusive in composition. In this sense, FUB’s habitable praxis unfolds along what may be described as a critical-compassionate pedagogical axis. Hao (2011) defines “critical-compassionate pedagogy” as a practice that situates the learning environment within an inclusive and egalitarian framework, operating through liberatory and reflexive performances that involve all living participants. This pedagogy, described as “not a destination but a process of joint participation,” centres an educational approach grounded in compassion and understanding towards students, while simultaneously assigning educators specific responsibilities: “to pose difficult questions they may prefer to avoid, to interrogate their own identities, ‘positions’, and privileges within academia and society, and to think reciprocally about the diverse needs of all participants.”

Between April and September 2018, FUB operated for approximately 45 days in total, organising “Open Weeks” during 4–20 May, 29 June–15 July, and 31 August–15 September 2018. During these periods, FUB hosted pedagogical activities and performative actions including “seminar groups, workshops, discussions, presentations and lectures, concerts and performances, hot tub talks, muddy walks across the basin, and discursive dinners” (Url-2) (Figure 5, fragment from the meta-narrative [see Figure 6]). These practices stood in sharp contrast to the limiting and standardising educational policies of neoliberal universities, privileging instead experimental experience and generative co-presence within a critical-compassionate pedagogical orientation.

Figure 5.

“Pedagogical Network” Based Fragment From the Multi-Layered Meta-Narrative of the Pedagogical Universe at Floating University Berlin.

Figure 6.

A Multi-Layered Meta-Narrative of the Pedagogical Universe at Floating University Berlin, Revealing Both the Theoretical Framework and the Visual Articulations of FUB’s Practice Through Heterogenetic Assemblages of Alliances and Entanglements.

To better grasp the systemic relations underpinning FUB’s activities, we turn to Tsing’s depiction of matsutake mushroom pickers:

The freedom of matsutake mushroomers is irregular and cannot be rationalised. It is therefore performative, communally differentiated, and effervescent. This freedom, marked by the noisy and rowdy cosmopolitanism of the site, arises from open-ended cultural interplays, full of potential conflict and misunderstanding. (Tsing, 2015, p. 75)

Much like matsutake picking, FUB operates through non-normative alliances that preserve subjectivity. Through contingent encounters and situated interactions, it activates heterogenesis and produces habitable praxis. FUB’s first “semester culminated in a two-day event—the First Floating University Symposium—organised around the ecology of the rainwater basin and its possible future trajectories” (Url-2).

Following the First Floating University Symposium in 2018, the use of the FUB site was transferred by raumlaborberlin to the Floating Association (Floating e.V.), a collective and solidaristic initiative established to continue its activities within a free and independent framework. ⁸ During this transition, raumlaborberlin deliberately adopted a “floating” position, continuing to support FUB’s vision as an experimental urban practice laboratory. Through the design of architectural additions and the development of structural interventions responding to emerging needs and modes of use, it contributed to the continuity of FUB’s pedagogical practices.

Epilogue: The Meta-Narrative of Floating University Berlin’s Pedagogical Universe

Floating University Berlin (FUB), as examined here through the development of a multi-layered meta-narrative of its pedagogical and spatial operations (Figure 6), embodies a performative, relational, and open-ended habitable praxis that challenges the doctrines of institutional and formal education. By situating itself for-itself (pour-soi) within a post-industrial wetland and operating as a temporary urban laboratory, FUB demonstrates how more-than-living ecosystemic associations can shape critical-compassionate pedagogical environments defined by inclusivity, collectivity, and the preservation of constituent subjectivities through heterogenesis.

The meta-narrative reveals a spatial-temporal configuration in which pedagogical activities and multispecies life cycles dynamically interweave. FUB’s annual rhythm—concentrated between April and November—is not merely a calendrical framework for activities, but a constitutive condition aligned with the rhythms of its surrounding ecosystem. This entanglement foregrounds a mode of learning and building in which architecture is neither static nor singular, but emerges as mutable, co-produced assemblages of tectonics. Through adaptive materials—metal scaffolding systems, tensile or inflatable membranes, natural-composite and wooden structural elements, as well as surfaces, claddings, and shells—these assemblages weather, erode, and transform alongside the environment.

Architectural interventions, such as the “Island of Retreat” (2019) and the “Satellite Campus with a Rain Palace” (2020–2021), reflect a logic of incompletion and temporal autonomy in which structural elements are deliberately left open to situated and experimental spatial practices. Rather than asserting permanence, these interventions cultivate a sensibility that privileges process over product, circulation over enclosure, and ecological responsiveness over formal closure. This material language becomes integral to FUB’s pedagogical vision, positioning spatial configurations not as passive backdrops but as active participants in the generation of knowledge. FUB’s systemic relations produce a conceptual and material detachment—an active divergence—from the institutional university.

In practices such as the “discursive dinner”, everyday acts such as food preparation are transformed into collective rituals that suspend hierarchy and generate shared agency, articulated through playful designations such as “self-organised salad” or “pitanarchy bread.” This collective ethos persists across subsequent semesters at FUB: from “memeclassworldwide” (2021), conceived by Free Radicals as an autonomous, instruction-free, and parasitic class, to the “brunch assembly” held during the Learnscapes Symposium 2023. Similarly, actions organised during the 2025 semester—such as “medicinal herbs: colonial resistance and collective care, heavy eyes hypnosis” and “experimental dinner, a.k.a. quantum brew: discourse and dinner”—demonstrate the ongoing vitality of this collective orientation. Taken together, these practices mark a shift from pedagogical models grounded in instructional authority towards reciprocal modes of co-learning, and can be read as a habitable praxis that resists the managerial and rationalising logics of higher education.

Micropolitical resistance at FUB manifests pedagogically as a refusal of the dominant neoliberal paradigm of the university. In place of a conventional curriculum, hierarchical instruction, and spatial enclosure, FUB enacts a situated learning ecology through de-hierarchised interactions among living constituents. Learning emerges through doing otherwise: inhabiting the rainwater basin, assembling temporary structures, and participating in nomadic events such as hot tub talks, muddy walks, discursive dinners that reconfigure what counts as pedagogical space and practice. These acts do more than negate dominant structures; they constitute a generative threshold with a militant-optimistic orientation, materialising new and habitable alternatives through embodied, relational, and more-than-living modes of world-making.

In this context, “meta-narrative” is constructed through curated quotations from readings and sources, atmospheric collages, mapping-based inferences, and diagrammatic expressions associated with the rearticulated counterparts of Guattari’s three ecologies—environment, social relations, and human subjectivity—defined in this study as “the more-than-living ecosystem,” “assemblages of tectonics,” and “the pedagogical network.” Within this narrative, pedagogy becomes a site of intersection for entangled constituents, while learning emerges through distributed effects, situated materiality, and collective becoming. In addition to the written and visual content developed through reflections on pedagogical actions, meta-narrative is further deepened through three distinct “flows of identifiers”: (1) methods, tactics, and strategies of action, (2) qualities derived from the ecology of FUB and its surrounding rainwater retention basin, and (3) positionalities observed or emerging within pedagogical practices. Each of these flows traces a different trajectory within FUB’s habitable praxis.

Meta-narrative also incorporates four “impalpable frameworks,” embedded within different sections of the collages and interwoven with the flows of identifiers. These frameworks—composed of arrayed geometric frames and the volumes they delineate—highlight specific ecosystemic constituents or actions within FUB’s existential territory. Enhancing the spatial and conceptual density of the narrative, these frameworks are articulated as: (1) “the interlaced dome,” emerging through accumulative architectural interventions, (2) “the thin-sliced cuboid,” defined through participatory and interconnected approaches, (3) “the potato earth,” shaped by multispecies ecosystemic practices, and (4) “the bumpy arcade,” constructed through experimental, situated, and critical-compassionate learning. Together, curated quotations, atmospheric collages, mapping-based inferences, and diagrammatic expressions—including flows of identifiers and impalpable frameworks (Figure 7)—form a layered cartography. This cartography foregrounds pedagogy through entanglement, subjectivity, and more-than-living ecologies, extending beyond conventional representational modes while reinforcing collaborative forms of spatial production and action at FUB.

Figure 7.

“Flows of Identifiers” and “Impalpable Frameworks” Layers From the Multi-Layered Meta-Narrative of the Pedagogical Universe at Floating University Berlin.

If we draw a concluding inference from meta-narrative, we may argue that the architectural interventions unfolding within FUB’s spatial atmosphere—embedded in the more-than-living ecosystem of a post-industrial wetland—together with the critical-compassionate pedagogical practices enacted therein, constitute a suspended conglomerate within FUB’s habitable praxis: an assemblage that remains invisible yet becomes traceable through the meta-narrative. Guattari’s (2000) definition of “life” as “an action sustained as a tireless endeavour—not oriented toward a specific, visible goal but driven instead by the exploration of new possibilities and responsiveness to contingent events that may redirect us” (p. 13) converges here with FUB’s approach. Through performative acts that can be understood as micropolitical forms of resistance diverging from neoliberal mechanisms, FUB constructs a habitable praxis that resonates with this conception. Since its first semester in 2018, all events and actions organised by FUB have sustained and transformed the pedagogical universe defined through this suspended conglomerate, keeping it dynamic, generative, and open to change. Centring research, exploration, and critical inquiry, these practices generate dynamic alliances and de-hierarchised interactions; within the conglomerate, they form situated and entangled knots—coded in meta-narrative as flows of identifiers and impalpable frameworks.