We warmly invite you to join our Kick-Off event of this year’s annual theme in Urban Design: "Sensing Zones", on Thursday, October 16 at 5pm.

With the Annual Theme 2025/2026 “Sensing Zones,” the UD study program looks at environmental, technical, political, and social dimensions of zones and of zoning practices in the urban context. How do concepts such as the critical zone, climate zones, planning zones, and security zones shape urban life and future livability in 21st-century cities? And how can we, with our own bodies, sense those spatial borders that are clearly defined on paper or by measurable frameworks, but ambiguous and invisible upon encounter?

After an introduction into the Annual Theme by Prof. Regula Burri and Prof. Hanna Göbel, our guests Anna Romeo (TU Berlin) will discuss Tesla’s Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg and its impact on groundwater scarcity, Charlotte Falk (Behörde für Umwelt, Klima, Energie und Agrarwirtschaft Hamburg) will share insights and follow-up projects from the city climate analysis, and Christoph Hassler (Bündnis Hansaplatz) will analyze artificial intelligence for police surveillance in Hamburg’s central district St. Georg.