Post by Tanya Jose

I had the opportunity to be part of the “Irregular Circularities” Summer Camp, organized by Reallabor ZEKIWA Zeitz and the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, as part of my research at Hochschule Anhalt. Bringing together forty-eight participants—artists, architects, and designers from across the world working across four thematic clusters: Soil, Energy, Air, and Dreams. I am especially grateful to Professor Vera Lauf for making this experience possible. SOIL challenged me to change my perspective. Instead of looking at eye level, I found myself bending down towards the ground. Soil became more than a passive surface; it emerged as a living archive carrying traces of industrial histories, ecological processes, and future possibilities. DREAMS left me wondering whether dreaming is ever an individual act. Ideas overlapped, shifted, and transformed through collective making, while the site and its materials constantly shaped our decisions. Creativity did not begin with a blank page; it began with what already existed, waiting to be seen differently. AIR made me realize that a place is always a matter of negotiation. It lies somewhere between what we expect to find, what people choose to share, and what the city quietly reveals when we are willing to wander, observe, and listen. ENERGY transformed my understanding of the word Energy. It was no longer only about resources, machines, or systems of production. Energy also carried questions of labor, memory, responsibility, and the people whose lives made these systems possible. At its core, the concept behind the summer camp was to stop pretending that systems at large are clean, loops are closed, and transformation is linear. As architects, we are often taught a linear process: a client, a site, a brief, a concept, drawings, approvals, construction, completion. On the other hand in practice, processes get out of sync, overlap, change direction, rarely function as smoothly as conceived. They are made incrementally through expansions, improvements, upgrades, repairs and retrofitting, and are mobilised slowly over time as and when the need arises and resources permit. What I valued most about those ten days was exactly this—the willingness to embrace this uncertainty. It demanded a different kind of practice. One that was flexible, collaborative, and genuinely open. Rather than a single person's logic directing the outcome, knowledge emerged through conversation, making, disagreement, and shared experience. Sharing a few highlights and reflections from this journey on my blog https://lnkd.in/dHqnqBDr