STARS EU takes another step towards consolidating its European campus

Around 60 students, doctoral candidates and lecturers from nine European universities recently took part in the Ou[te]r Campus BIP project, the STARS EU initiative aimed at developing a collaborative, interdisciplinary and transnational European campus model. During the event, hosted by the Bremen University of Applied Sciences, six concepts were developed focusing on new forms of interaction between physical spaces and the digital opportunities offered by STARS EU.

The aim of this workshop, which became a blended intensive programme, was to build on the momentum generated by the collaborative “Interspace” project — also held at HSB in 2025 — in order to further develop these ideas and translate them into long-term structures with a “solid institutional foundation”. This represents a clear step towards a “co-creation campus that transcends disciplinary and geographical boundaries”, according to Janina Ebner, member of the Co-creation Campus at STARS EU.

Alongside her, Professor Maria Clarke, also involved in the initiative, highlighted that the workshop helped strengthen the project for the future. “Bringing together more than 60 interdisciplinary participants — students, doctoral candidates and members of academic staff — from the nine partner institutions was no easy task.” “During the workshop, there was a clear willingness to collaborate, build networks and work together to address the complex question ‘What is a European campus?’ and to find answers to it.”

The focus has been placed on strengthening STARS EU, and therefore the groups created continue to work on the six concepts developed, which explore proposals for physical spaces and digital possibilities. The outcomes of the Ou[te]r Campus teaching and knowledge-transfer project will be exhibited from 1 to 9 July 2026 in an exhibition at the Transferlabor (formerly AB Galerie) at Hochschule Bremen.

Interspace 2025

Ou[te]r Campus BIP stems from the collaborative project carried out in 2025 under the name “Interspace”, which explored ways of creating shared and connected campus spaces within STARS EU. The initiative brought together an international group of students from the HSB School of Architecture and the Integrated Design programme at the University of the Arts Bremen (HfK), who developed the first ideas. Among them was the STARS EU intercultural pavilion, conceived as a meeting place, which is currently on display at the Higher School of Engineering of the University of La Laguna.

The universities participating in this second phase are: Aleksander Moisiu University (Albania); Krakow University of Technology (Poland); Hanze University of Applied Sciences (Groningen, the Netherlands); Hochschule Bremen (Germany); Polytechnic Institute of Bragança (Portugal); Silesian University in Opava (Czech Republic); University of La Laguna (Tenerife, Spain); Université Marie et Louis Pasteur (France); and University West (Trollhättan, Sweden).

*The Ou[te]r Campus BIP programme is funded by STARS EU and Erasmus+ grants.