From 9 to 13 June 2026, the LIFE BE-WoodEN project is taking part in the New European Bauhaus Festival in Brussels, one of Europe's key events on built environment innovation, sustainability, and quality of life.
The Festival offers an opportunity to share the results achieved by the project and to strengthen connections with the New European Bauhaus network, particularly through the NEB SUD Hub, now part of the NEB Academy.
As part of the Fair, BE-WoodEN is present with an exhibition stand titled "NEB and Placemaking: LIFE BE-WoodEN for Social Housing".
The stand is not conceived as a static showcase of results, but as a compact laboratory: visitors are invited to experience, even in just a few minutes, the same methodological journey that guided the regeneration of shared spaces in the social housing building in Imperia - from the Innovation Lab and Challenge-Based Learning through to hands-on construction workshops.
The programme unfolds in three stages. A first narrative phase, through videos and panels documenting the Imperia pilot, introduces the project context and methodology. This is followed by an active participation phase, with two activities open to all visitors: a Community Wall, where participants respond to questions on collective living, ageing in community, and material choices, contributing to a shared and evolving composition; and a design activity, in which visitors are invited to imagine and sketch the configuration of the upper terraces of the Imperia building, working from a scaled floor plan. The contributions collected will feed into a collective restitution, to be shared with ARTE Imperia and local stakeholders - extending the participatory process initiated by the project well beyond the Festival itself.
The stand also displays documentary materials from the project: a summary panel of activities, drawings from the winning entry of the Imperia pilot design competition, and a photographic selection from the hands-on construction workshop. Project videos play on a loop on the screen provided by the organisers.
