The Bauhaus-Universität Weimar Matriculation Ceremony welcomes new students in the upcoming 2025/2026 winter semester. The start of the new semester marks not only the return of already-enrolled students back to campus, but also the beginning of an exciting new phase for many first-year students.

Vom 22. September bis 1. Oktober 2025 findet das achte Science Camp für Thüringer Ingenieurstudierende an der Bauhaus-Universität Weimar statt. Im Fokus der hochschulübergreifenden Lernreihe stehen dieses Mal akustische Signale, die von schwingenden Baustrukturen ausgehen. Ziel ist es, Hands-On-Erfahrungen mit Bauwerkserschütterungen und insbesondere Erdbeben zu sammeln und sich mit Studierenden und Industriepartnern zu vernetzen.

The Bauhaus-Universität Weimar is participating in this year's Campus Exhibition at Ars Electronica 2025 in Linz with several contributions. In keeping with the festival motto »Panic«, students and faculty from the departments of Art and Design as well as Architecture and Urbanism are presenting artistic works that critically examine digital technologies, ecological contexts, and social issues.

This year, the Herder Prize, which is endowed with 2,000 euros, is being conferred to students from the teacher training programme in Fine Art Education (Secondary School) (»Lehramt an Gymnasien Kunst«). In the programme’s introductory project entitled »Almost Perfect« (Fast Perfekt), the prospective teachers explored the topic of »Perfection«. The prize acknowledges artistically sophisticated and innovative work offering contemporary interpretations of Johann Gottfried Herder’s ideas, which addresses social challenges and proposes creative long-term solutions.

A short TikTok clip, a provoking comment below the Instagram post – shared and liked thousands of times. This is then followed by a flood of support, outrage, and hatred: Radical anti-feminist and queerphobic voices are becoming dominant in social media discourse. Algorithms, filter bubbles, and targeted campaigns reinforce these tendencies and influence political attitudes. But how do we fight hate and hate speech on social media platforms? From 2 to 7 September, the »Künstlerisch forschende Strategien zur De-Radikalisierung auf Social Media« block seminar invites students to explore digital networks and develop creative counter-strategies to online hate. The results will be presented as part of the finissage of the Kunstfest Weimar.

From 6 to 31 August 2025, around 250 students from over 50 countries will take part in two to three-and-a-half week language and specialist courses at the Bauhaus Summer School. Guests are warmly invited to the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar campus for the final presentation on 29 August beginning at 2 pm.

Project work forms the core of teaching at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. But what exactly does this mean? Also for students in their everyday lives? Since the summer semester 2025, prospective students have been able to gain in-depth, often very personal insights via a new website. Twelve students spent several weeks documenting their daily lives in pictures, texts and thoughts. They explained their progress during the semester, along with how their groups were getting on and their personal development. As the title already reveals, everything is »in progress«.

On Thursday 10 July 2025, the Student Council (StuKo) conferred Teaching Awards to six teaching formats at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar that students consider particularly good. The award ceremony took place during the Summaery opening event, which was held behind the main university building.

Admittedly, no one has ever been able to visit all the summaery venues and »take in« all the events. With 50 venues and countless openings, presentations, celebrations, award ceremonies and panel discussions, the programme is simply too packed for that.

»ACHTUNG«, the German word for »attention«, is the motto of this year’s summaery. It was decided by the Faculty of Art & Design, which is also responsible for the associated visuals. The projects of second-semester students from three of the faculty’s five study programmes are well worth seeing. Hence »attention« please: here’s what’s new!

How much attention does an idea need? And when does an idea become a catalyst for social change? During the summaery2025, the Faculty of Media will showcase its projects in the newly renovated building at Bauhausstraße 11. Visitors are invited to come explore new perspectives on digital, social and creative topics of the future.

How can we rethink spaces to make them sustainable for the future? What social and environmental needs must tomorrow’s homes and communal spaces meet? And how can architecture not just reflect change, but also help shape it? From 10 to 13 July, more than 35 projects will show how students from the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism tackled these questions. Many projects focus on existing buildings, take a resource-conscious, sensitive approach and often have a strong local or regional focus.

There’s a lot of building work going on at the Coudray campus and in the lecture hall building right now, hence the engineers will show their work elsewhere between 10 and 13 July. There will be a pop-up exhibition on Goetheplatz, a straw bale tower on the outskirts of Weimar, plant walls with sensor technology in the seminar building and an outdoor clothes exchange on the campus. All this and much more awaits visitors to this year’s annual exhibition at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. It’s well worth taking a look at the programme, as some venues will only be open for a short time.

Masihne Rasuli, artistic staff member in Visuelle Kommunikation (Visual Communication), has long been interested in scientific topics. To get her students interested in the world of research, she will be offering a new course in the upcoming 2025/2026 winter semester: »Science, Bitch!«. In this course, design and science meet on an even playing field. It is not about explaining from an outside perspective, but rather about understanding and communicating from the inside.

The Faculty of Media at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar is welcoming first-year Computer Science students with something special in the 2025/2026 winter semester: Their own VR headsets. The Meta Quest 3 headset can be used flexibly throughout the degree programme in courses, group projects, individual research, or experiments at home. The »VR Ready for You« campaign aims to familiarise students with the latest computer science research ad to actively prepare them for working with current and future technologies.

The PARFORCE project, led by the Professorship of Advanced Structures at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, was awarded the PROFFORMANCE Higher Education Teacher Award 2025, as well as 1st place in the digitalisation category for its innovative »Experimental Testing Based on Impact and Resistance: Wind, Fire and Earthquake« course. The award ceremony took place on 4 June as part of the »Teacher Power! - Hochschulpolitik in Aktion« online event. Of the 161 submissions, 17 projects were awarded prizes.

Am Freitag, 13. Juni 2025, eröffnete die Outdoor-Ausstellung eines außergewöhnlichen Projektes: Fotografien von drei Studierenden der Visuellen Kommunikation, die in Zusammenarbeit mit sechs inhaftierten Frauen aus der JVA Chemnitz entstanden, sind bis Ende September auf den Außenmauern der Haftanstalt zu sehen. Ein zweiter Ausstellungsteil wird nur an einem Tag im Herbst zum Tag der offenen Tür der JVA zugänglich sein. Richard Schött hat sowohl die Eröffnung als auch alle Teile der Ausstellung für uns eingefangen.

Vom 21. bis 29. Juni 2025 laden zahlreiche Unternehmen, Hochschulen, Netzwerke, Initiativen sowie Städte und Gemeinden zur »WOCHE DES WASSERSTOFFS« ein. Mit einem Online-Vortrag für Studieninteressierte sowie einem zweitägigen Fachworkshop für Entscheidungsträger*innen ist erstmalig auch die Bauhaus-Universität Weimar bei an der deutschlandweiten Aktion dabei. Ziel ist es, über das Potenzial der zukunftsweisenden Technologie aufzuklären und die vielfältigen Forschungsaktivitäten erlebbar zu machen.

As part of the long-standing collaboration between the NHRE master degree program at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ), our students had the opportunity yesterday to participate in the annual academic excursion to Potsdam. This tradition, now running for over a decade, provides the students with an invaluable blend of historical, scientific, and interdisciplinary insight.

The Bauhaus-Universität Weimar is expanding its range of international courses with the »Media Ecologies« Master’s degree programme: The innovative, research-based programme explores the complex relationships between media and ecological systems, teaching students to understand media not just as isolated technology, but as complex networks and environments that significantly influence our perception and understanding of the environment.